We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness
― George Orwell, 1984
1984 is a well known but you must know it book. I read it as a teenager with little idea of what it meant. The film version is grey, dark, and depressing, except for one scene where Winston escapes into the countryside with Julia.
It’s not well known, but Orwell loved nature and grew roses. The name “Orwell” derives from the river in Suffolk. He wrote about the spring, as eloquently as anyone with additional poignancy:
Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London
He wrote 1984 on the Scottish island of Jura. His other famous book is Animal Farm, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying is another. In his diaries he wrote:
This will need more doing than the rest as the ground is very sour & full of weeds. Cut down the remaining phloxes, tied up some of the chrysanthemums which had been blown over. Difficult to do much these afternoons now it is winter-time. The chrysanths now in full flowers, mostly dark reddy-brown, & a few ugly purple & white ones which I shan’t keep. Roses still attempting to flower, otherwise no flowers in the garden now (November 1939)
Raining much of the day. Everything now very sodden. Roses are budding well (March 1940)