Craig Easton's Photographic Homage to Orwell's Jura Retreat

Photographer Craig Easton has published 'An Extremely Un-get-atable Place', a monograph revisiting the Hebrides island of Jura where George Orwell wrote 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' in the late 1940s while battling tuberculosis. The book, first in an 'Island Trilogy' by GOST Books (2025), features large-format 10x8 landscape and still-life images printed as silver gelatin prints toned in tea. Easton captures the windswept terrain, red deer, and ragged coastlines, interspersed with extracts from Orwell's diaries and manuscript pages. The project originated from an invitation to stay at Barnhill, Orwell's remote home, in 2023. Easton, a multi-award-winning photographer and oral historian, frames the work as about hope and finding joy amid political turmoil, mirroring Orwell's own resilience after his wife Eileen's death. The monograph joins Easton's previous works 'Bank Top', 'Thatcher's Children', and 'Fisherwomen'.