Barnhill

Shortlisted for Best Fiction of 2019, The Morning Star

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About the Book: 

George 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 created 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.

Reviews: 

Through 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 MACINTOSH

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

This partly factual and partly reimagined account of George Orwell’s final years is a surprisingly satisfying read… Barnhill is certainly a good novel in itself. It is well worth the time to read. PAUL SIMON, Morning Star

Barnhill is a fascinating and original new addition to the canon of books about Orwell and brings a distinctly Scottish perspective to one of the great backstories in literature. ANGUS MACKINNON

This is a remarkably compelling yet profound study of the Jura days of one of the Twentieth Century’s most prophetic writers. I was fascinated and gripped. LORD GEORGE ROBERTSON OF PORT ELLEN

About the Author:

NORMAN BISSELL became principal teacher of history at Braidhurst High School in Motherwell after obtaining an MA (Honours) degree in philosophy and history from the University of Glasgow. He was formerly a member of the Scottish Examination Board history panel and until recently an Area Officer of the Educational Institute of Scotland. His first poetry collection Slate, Sea and Sky features poems written in his native Glasgow and on the Isle of Luing in Argyll, where he now lives. His interest in the need for radical cultural renewal prompted him to found and lead the Open World Poetics group from 1989 until 1999 and to become director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics in 2002.