For Argyll

Bookmark your diary for 3.30pm every day this week from Monday (3rd November) onwards. Radio 4 is broadcasting a series of short stories written by writers awarded a place on the Jura Malt Whisky Writers’ Retreat programme. The writers include Will Self, Philip Gourevitch, Janice Galloway and Romesh Gunesekera.

One of Argyll’s many unique resources, the programme was launched in 2006 and has won a prestigious business award for its sponsors, Jura Distillery and Scottish Book Trust. It won the A&B Scotland Cultural Branding Award, sponsored by McGrigors LLP after beating off entries from Bank of Scotland & National Galleries of Scotland , Highland Spring & The Edinburgh Military Tattoo, NEC Computers & Edinburgh International Film Festival as well as Pagan Osborne & National Museums Scotland.

The writer’s chosen receive a bursary of £2,500 and sole use of the Jura Distillery Lodge for the month of their retreat. They write what they’ve come to write and they also write a short story for BBC Radio 4.

Right in the middle of Craighouse, the only town on Jura, they cannot avoid the life of this lively island community. While they choose how far to get involved in it, keeping a distance is difficult.

A writer who was on Jura this year during some major developments there was Sri Lankan novelist, Romesh Gunesekera, who took part in the island’s 10k run and a host of ceilidhs, one of which resulted in a broken arm - but not his. He saw the launch of the first direct passenger ferry from Jura to the mainland at Tayvallich - and the all-night party afterwards. He saw - and ate at - the biennial Seafood Extravaganza Jura runs to raise money for charity. He played cricket on the beach as a temporary member of Jura’s budding cricket club. He went to the island’s Sports Day at Ardlussa - but not to participate. Finally he made it to Barnhill, at the northern end of the island beyond Ardlussa. This is the remote farmhouse where George Orwell holed up to write Nineteen Eighty Four, the last book he wrote before dying of TB, leaving Jura to die.

Romesh has also spent creative time on another of Argyll’s islands - LIsmore - where he wrote his novel, Reef. In fact many of his novels have been born from immersion in a specific Scottish place - Speyside (The Sandglass); Skye (Heaven’s Edge); and Stromness (The Match).

Of all the authors awarded the Jura Writers’ Retreat, the one whose relationship with the remote island fastness of Jura seems the most improbable is Will Self, the first writer to be given the retreat. Self is in many ways the ultimate metropolitan sophisticate, the writer thrown off John Major’s campaign plane for sniffing coke in the loo.

But Self is full of surprises. He turns out to have a deep affection for Orkney and has written every one of his first five novels on the Orcadian Isle of Rousay. He also turns out to be a serious walker, describing the activity as ‘one of my preferred methods of engagement with my muse’.

This series of radio stories is unmissable. The individuality of the writers… the knowledge that what is heard has come into being on this long Argyll island of the west…