A ‘script in hand’ reading about George Orwell, the women in his life, and the battle to complete his masterpiece in a Scottish hospital

With 2025 marking the 75th Anniversary of author George Orwell’s death, this is a timely ‘script in hand’ reading of a moving and highly-entertaining new play by writer and director Richard Baron, whose previous Pitlochry productions include Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed and Chicago. On Christmas Eve 1947, recently widowed George Orwell leaves his remote Hebridean writer’s retreat and is admitted to a hospital near Glasgow with advanced tuberculosis. But despite his rapidly failing health and fear of assassination, he has a vitally important work to finish: perhaps the most significant novel of the twentieth century, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Based on real events, The Race to 1984 uses Orwell’s gift for humour and plain speaking to uncover fascinating new details about his extraordinary life and the complex relationship with the unsung women who inspired his work, including his first wife Eileen who died tragically young, and the untold romantic story of the Scottish doctor’s wife who against her husband’s orders, smuggled Orwell writing materials to help him complete his never-more-relevant masterpiece.

There will be a post-performance Q&A with the writer and cast.

Winter Words Festival

Diary