![]() We toured the high cliffs and rolling fields of the peninsulas and scaled Ben Vicar, the island's highest point. 1400, back when the gallowglasses were a force to be reckoned with, and the Hebrides were practically a separate kingdom. My wife and I visited Loch Finlaggan, seat of the ancient Lords of the Isles around A.D. Islay proved a great place to hike into nature and through history. Taylor.Īlready, I had whiled away my trans- atlantic flight by re-reading "1984" and "Animal Farm," as well as stuff I'd always been meaning to get to, "Down and Out in Paris and London," "Homage to Catalonia" and "Why I Write." We flew from London to Glasgow, then took a puddle-jumper due west to a tiny airfield on the isle of Islay (pronounced, "Eye-Lah"). In Oxford I took advantage of one of world's most famed bookstores, Blackwell's Books, where they had a fine, fat shelf of volumes by and about Orwell, and I scored the award-winning biography of him by D.J. If I could get myself up to that remote site, I might be able to uncover more clues to those buried messages of hope in "1984." In my online research of this historic island chain, I stumbled upon the rural isle of Jura, which had been George Orwell's final refuge. My clan descended from the traveling Scots-Irish mercenaries (the English called them "gallowglasses") for whom the Hebrides had formed a home base as well as a seafarers' highway. I had a strong hankering to pursue an old dimension of McHugh family history. We settled on the Hebrides Islands as our target. Our deal was this: After I joined her there for a while, she would go with me to another part of the British Isles. When my wife decided to go to Oxford University in England for a summer extension course, I came along. But "1984" sustains a few rays of hope, too, which is what I went looking for on Jura. That could easily appear on a press release from the Ministry of Truth. "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace," (George W. And ploys of Newspeak seem ascendant in political speech.
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