This book is the third of three books I was given as Christmas presents and I saved this one until last as it is non-fiction and I didn't feel ready to tackle it just after Christmas. It's a biography of George Orwell and the main focus is the time he spent on the Outer Hebridean Island of Jura. I must confess that I have only read one of Orwell's books as a set book at school, and I can't say I enjoyed it very much, so I never went on to read 1984 or any of his other works. The style of writing here struck me as being more of a research paper than a mass market biography as the text is often supplemented with superscript numbers leading to endnotes, and those take up twelve pages at the back. There are also plenty of quotes from books and letters used to support the narrative and this book is clearly aimed at students of Orwell and other literary types rather than casual readers. Orwell was born in India in 1903 in the heyday of the British Empire ...