VISIT TO BARNHILL ON JURA 2018: "THE BIG BROTHER FACTORY" Team Photo at Barnhill The Isle of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, was the arcane site chosen by George Orwell to spend the finishing four years of his life writing his most celebrated novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Once every two years, during the month of June, The Orwell Society and The Orwell Foundation arrange, under the auspice of Richard Blair (Orwell's son), a visit to the scene where he and his father, now and then accompanied by some relatives, lived from 1945 through 1949. The Isle of Jura is a unique and remote "paradise" island, which in spite of being not far from Glasgow, just 96 km away, it still involves a long trip of at least 4 hours back and forth. The nearest mainland harbour is at Crinan, where you have to take the Ferry which will set you on Jura in about one hour and a half. Once there, the sweet and inebriating smell of cottage whiskey welcomes your sens
"RICHARD BLAIR IN NERJA" On March 27th 2018 I had the honour to attend Richard Blair’s conference on his father, George Orwell, in the village of Nerja (Málaga, Spain), where everyone can enjoy some of the most beautiful views of the Costa del Sol in Andalusia. I was gladly surprised that the big auditorium of the Centro Cultural de Nerja ( The Arts Society of Nerja ) was full. Over three hundred people, most of them belonging to the British community from Nerja, left no available seating. Richard Blair delighted us with a brilliant and soul-stirring talk on his father’s Spanish “venture” from Christmas 1936 till June 1937 , when he actively participated in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the POUM ( Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista , ‘Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification’) on the side of the Spanish Official Government that was being attacked by the fascists. But Richard Blair did not only provide a loyal account of his father’s impassioned commitmen