Description
Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell left post-war London for Barnhill, a remote farmhouse on the Isle of Jura, to write what became Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was driven by a passionate desire to undermine the enemies of democracy and make plain the dangers of dictatorship, surveillance, doublethink and censorship.
Typing away in his damp bedroom overlooking the garden he curated and the sea beyond, he invented Big Brother, Thought Police, Newspeak and Room 101 – and created a masterpiece.
Barnhill tells the dramatic story of this crucial period of Orwell’s life. Deeply researched, it reveals the private man behind the celebrated public figure – his turbulent love life, his devotion to his baby son and his declining health as he struggled to deliver his dystopian warning to the world.
Trade ReviewThrough a literary lens, Bissell does for Orwell what Johnny Depp did for J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland. He brings the man most vibrantly alive. Alastair McIntosh
Bissell fills out and explores more deeply Orwell’s character and his relationships with those around him. It’s a very believable portrayal, digging beneath the surface of a man who could be awkward, opinionated and intransigent in an attempt to see what made him tick. The Herald on Sunday
... a truly excellent and compelling novel, one which provides a perceptive insight into the wretchedness experienced by Orwell as he attempted to finish 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' before his life expired. The author has succeeded in transcending the aura surrounding both Barnhill and Orwell himself, in a book that wholly subsumes the reader in those last years of literary and moral anguish… Possibly the best book you'll read this year. The Ileach
