Jura and other literary boltholes

I am a huge fan of George Orwell who not only I consider him an author of rare talent. From his clever lampooning of The Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin with his scheming pigs and gullible carthorses to the dark picture of a totalitarian Britain which was his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, the man was a visionary and genius. You may have read my previous post where I did a book review on Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book I have no hesitation recommending, you will recognise many words and phrases from this book such as "Thought Police", "Big Brother" and "Room 101", he was away ahead of the game. Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four May in 1946 when he stayed at the Scottish Island of Jura where he rented Barnhill, an abandoned farmhouse at the north end of the island. He spent much of the year there, then returned in April 1947, and again in July 1948 - only really leaving for East Kilbride, on the outskirts of Glasgow, during the winter of 1947, where his failing condition was diagnosed as TB.  I stayed a few days in Jura last year, just myself with Rocky my Parrot in his Travel Motel cage, a couple of books which of course included Nineteen Eighty-Four and a bottle of whisky not a Jura malt, I chose to bring my favourite single malt whisky which is a cask strength laphroaig which matched to the little peat burning fire in the little cottage just nicely. It was a solitude escape for a few days from civilisation and was a few months after my Mother passed away so it was nice to get out to get my head together and some peace to read a book staying only a couple hundred yards from where the author wrote it. I did have a little wander around Barnhill were Orwell stayed but it was locked up securely during my visit so I only saw it from the outside but I understand now that you can rent that little cottage. It will be short on mod-cons and 21st century gadgetry, but it can be hired from £1000 per week a price which reflects the fact that it sleeps eight, rather than revelling in the a-man-and-his-pen solitude that so inspired Orwell, but this place would only appeal to me for the solitude so would lose its purpose if I went with a large contingent so I guess the smaller little cottage a short walk away will be my lot. It’s a beautiful place to visit if you need to escape for a few days, a little remote cottage on Jura is a tonic, A sort of heaven certainly an idyll far removed from the dystopia and sense of dread which seems to penetrate the reader's bones through the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four and in keeping with its heroic isolation, you’ll rely on a generator for electric light and charging phones although I had to walk up a little hill to get a reception and forget about Wi-fi or 3G.

There are other other literary boltholes where you can stay around the world if, like me, you are a bit of a bibliophile and total immersion sounds bliss staying close to where the book was written or based. Some examples are for example for fans of Ernest Hemingway there is Room 201 in the Gran Hotel La Perla, Pamplona where he wrote finest work The Sun Also Rises (1926) which is a love letter to Pamplona and its bull-running culture, set in the heady atmosphere of Spain in the mid-Twenties.  Or perhaps John Steinbeck fans would like Pacific Grove, California, Jamaica for the readers of Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye.

I always wanted to visit the Greek island of Cephalonia to sit by a fishing boat pulled up on the beach to read Louis de Bernières’s Captain Corelli's Mandolin which is one of my favorite books, perhaps even meet my own Pelagia and fall in love. Allow me to dream, in literature we can escape from the false people we met in this reality, perhaps its time for me to gather up a pile of books, my companion parrot and a bottle of laphroaig and escape from it all again, somewhere further, somewhere beautiful and above all ….somewhere isolated to leave this cancer of a society behind and the shallow false beasts who inhabit it.