HAD it not been for a passing fishing boat George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four would never have seen the light of day, or perhaps – given its darkly dystopian nature – I should say the black of night. Orwell chose Jura, a Scottish island with only 200 people, but around 6000 deer, to give birth to his magnum opus. I arrived with one question. Why?

I soon found out it’s not just Orwell. Scotland’s eighth largest island – Jura is not even in the 30 most populous isles – is a veritable literary star. Ian Rankin’s Question Of Blood and Andrew Erwin’s Burning Down George Orwell’s House swirl around this rugged Hebridean retreat. There are novels too by Alexander McCall Smith and Anne Michaels. Plenty of preparatory reading for a trip here.

On the musical front Jura has inspired Capercaillie, Skyclad and The Mekons; in 2010 the album Poets and Lighthouses, recorded on Jura by Tuvan singer Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha, hit Number 1 in the World Music Charts Europe – Jura’s Skervuile Lighthouse beams pride of place on its cover. And then, of course, we cannot ignore the KLF: you cannot ignore musicians who burned £1 million cash into the chill Hebridean air, as Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty did on Jura in 1994.

The National: George Orwell

Orwell (above) fled to Jura in 1946 – an isle he dubbed “extremely unget-at-able” – as the embers were still burning from World War Two and set up his writing cocoon in an ultra-remote whitewashed house at Barnhill on the island’s east coast. My first Barnhill visit is suitably dramatic as I swim over from a yacht in the bay.

As I battle ashore it isn’t just the icy waters catching my breath, but Jura. The scree-ravaged quartzite Paps of Jura dominate this most spectacular of isles, backed by swathes of moorland, a heavily indented coastline and the shimmering Atlantic. Forget being literary, Jura is positively cinematic.

I’m surprised by how modest one of the literary world’s most significant writing retreats is. But the views: this four-bedroom abode peers out from Jura across waters alive with dolphins and even whales. Golden eagles and sea eagles soar and the Argyll isles and coast frame the distance. And then there are those deer. Everywhere. Jura is an elemental island with few traces of Man; an isle that calms busy minds and distractions. It couldn’t be more different to the scenes Orwell was used to in London.

My swim was intended; Orwell’s was certainly not. The Gulf of Corryvreckan is respected, if not outright feared, by Scottish sailors, but Orwell’s bravery and sense of adventure – downright stupidity if we’re being unkind – led him into these treacherous waters in a small boat with his sister, adopted son, niece and nephew. Things went dangerously awry and they were thrown into waters that have claimed many a soul. Had it not been for a fortuitously passing lobster boat we would have never had the foresight and solace of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Steering clear of any Corryvreckan mishaps of my own I push inland to take a ramble in those Paps. I take a guide, who brutally warns me “walking on Jura is a bastard”. He’s spot on: it’s serious two steps forward and one step back yomping across the uneven ground. And that’s the decent terrain, as the bogs are a different level of pain. And then there is the scree on the Paps themselves – it’s tough to ascend and hazardous to descend.

The Paps are not the sort of place people should run. But they do, every year. The Isle of Jura Fell Race is a frankly ridiculous phenomenon, with 250 runners saying their prayers before bashing off from sea level up not just the trio of Paps, but four other peaks, with a scarcely believable 2730m of ascent over nigh 30km.

There is a lot about Jura that is scarcely believable, That man clings stubbornly to life here itself. There is just one real road, one pub and one hotel. The wee shop is the post office, which is also the social hub of the community. To be fair at least there is a whisky distillery. People on Jura don’t have the luxury of stressing about busy urban travails, not when there is peat to cut and life to live. On six visits here I’ve found Jura gloriously welcoming and informal. No-one cares who you are off-island. You are simultaneously welcome and completely anonymous.

Being anonymous must have suited Eric Blair – the Diurachs knew Orwell by his real name – as he spent the best part of three years here, before he left for Gloucestershire January 1949 to succumb to the tuberculosis that had long plagued him.

Change is afoot on Jura: the Ardfin Estate now sports an ultra-exclusive golf course and there is a new gin distillery. Over 20 years of visiting Jura, though, I’ve only ever felt tremors of change. There is only so much you can do with this glorious, unyielding mountainous brute.

Why did Orwell choose Jura? Was it for its clean air, or maybe that anonymity and peace? It could have been for the stripped-down elemental world Orwell needed to juxtapose with his brutal humanity. I suspect it was a mixture of these factors; maybe more.

You’ll have to sail over and meet Orwell’s ghost to decide for yourself.