There is no bathroom – most people took a bath once a week. The first few pages describe his sleeping arrangements in a cheap boarding house: four beds crammed in a small room. Here are descriptions of the difficulties of making ends meet, the great poverty, the high unemployment – the sheer hopelessness of it all. These descriptions are vivid accounts of real life. He lived among the miners and recorded what it was to work in the mines, to live among the poor. He left and traveled to the Midlands, Lancashire, Yorkshire. He probably could no longer afford to live in London. It is a record.īy now, the story printed on the back of my copy – that the Left Book Club commissioned Orwell to write this book – is very much doubted. It is not a treatise, trying to answer difficult questions. If the second part is dated what about the first part? This non-fictional account of poor people living in the industrial areas of Britain is more readable.

The speed of change increased from generation to generation. An improvement of living conditions, of living standards took place. Orwell’s prediction that the middle classes would not survive, never happen. What Orwell thinks of Hitler and Hitler’s Germany is already pretty clear.Īfter the Second World War, things started to change. He tries to answer questions like: if life for the poor is so horrible, why are not more socialists?Ī few of his remarks are quite right, but others are dated. He describes his childhood, how he came to attend a posh school where he did not totally fit in, time spent abroad and why he believes in socialism. It records George Orwell‘s long journey from being a member of a middle class family to becoming a socialist. This part contains a short autobiography. Or rather: these two short books published as one.įor it consists of two parts, the second one being a kind of long essay. Hunting through the bookcase for George Orwell’s book everybody is currently either reading or ordering through Amazon, I came across this one.

So a while ago, “the Road to Wigan Pier” ended up in my bookcase – unread. He had been on a tour through a few European countries and was reducing the luggage to be taken back home. It was a gift from an Australian relative of a neighbour of mine.

The road to wigan pier book review