1984 returns to the Isle of Jura

75 years after its publication, George Orwell's last masterpiece is coming home.

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of 1984. As it happens, I type this on a CalMac ferry on my way to the Isle of Jura where, as many people know, George Orwell wrote his last novel. Though, in point of fact, he was Mr Eric Blair, gentleman crofter, not George Orwell, celebrated writer, when he rented Barnhill at the far north of the island.

This is a piece from the archive, first dispatched when many fewer people subscribed to The Debatable Land than do now. It argues that far from being the “mad” or “suicidal” sojourn imagined by many metropolitan critics, the Hebridean life was in many ways better for Orwell than living in London. It was healthier, to begin with, and Jura is an easy place in which to sink into work.

This weekend also sees the launch - a kind of homecoming, really - for The Winston Smith Library of Truth and Victory, an art installation comprising 1,984 copies of different editions of 1984 collected and curated by the artist Hans Clausen. My …