Customer Reviews
Nothing Has Changed - By: M. Conroy, 05 Jun 2008 
Born & bred in Wigan.I had read 1984 & Animal Farm but had put off reading TRTWP until I was 50.
Orwell writes of the hopelessness of the masses & concludes that they accept their lot because of the "pallliatives" of modern technology i.e.cheap clothing (dream of being Greta Garbo or Clark Gable) , alcohol,the movies, radio, the footballl pools etc.
The government massage & manipulate statistics to show unemployment levels & poverty to be a fraction as bad as they reallly are.
The middle-class believed that the poor should be instructed to spend their means tested alllowance wisely eating tasteless but healthy food,wholemeal bread,oranges,raw carrots etc & to shun alcohol & tobacco etc.
Tell me as anything reallly changed or have we come full circle under New Labour.
Notes on 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. - By: Anita Treso, 01 Apr 2006 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is split into two parts. Part one is George Orwell's recording of his experiences in the North of England, meeting miner's families & reporting at first hand what he saw & heard. Orwell records with sincerity the working class condition. There is no blame or embellishment of what Orwell saw. Orwell's descriptions of the people in the boarding houses he was staying in, are wonderful. You reallly get a sense of the filth & depravation, & yet the people make you feel at home, to the point of marking your bread & butter with "a black thumb-print on it". I appreciate Orwell's candid writing. The stark reality of poverty is brought to life by Orwell, from his description of the conditions of working in the mines, to the weekly shopping bill & food consumption.
Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw & experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger & justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements & even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction & the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one.
In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time & a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us alll that there are still destitute people in the world & that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.
The Picture Speaks for Itself - By: Eric Anderson, 14 Nov 2002 This book is divided into two sections. The first is a devastating account of the lives of coal miners in the north of England. While this account may be exaggerated it is completely conceivable that life in this time under such social & political conditions might have been like this. He goes to considerable length to explore the personal reactions & methods of endurance of the people he met. Orwell's dedication to exploring what life was reallly like for the coal miners was made at considerable personal discomfort & were as heroic as Jonathan Kozol's efforts in our present time.
The second half of the book is a long argument by Orwell of the negative aspects of socialism. He does this in order to provoke a serious discussion over how socialism can be implemented in our society. He understood well, as demonstrated in 1984, that many political parties use propaganda as a means of convincing the public that theirs is the right way. But, by taking the opposing view & criticising his own beliefs, he is able to bring the issues of the party into an open forum to consider implementations of change rather than party rhetoric. He does this most sincerely & in no way tries to hide the faults of the socialist political system of thought. In doing so he proves himself to be quite dignified in his system of beliefs. The juxtaposition of these two sections provides a striking idea of the immediate need for political reformation. He did not need to defend socialism because the need for a political change that could effect the lives of the lower class he investigated was obvious. This showed that Orwell's political ideas didn't exist on some ideological utopian plain, but were firmly rooted in the immense danger a political system could inflict upon a large population. It would be wise to remember this in reading the more popular 1984 & Animal Farm as well.
This book is compelling not just for people interested in politics, but also for anyone interested in history & the human condition. It is something you will be able to learn much from & provide you with inspiration.
unflinching look at social conditions and Orwells politics - By: Dr. Sn Cottam, 02 Jul 2002 
George Orwell, commissioned by the Left Book Club, tours the recession hit mining areas of Lancashire & Yorkshire in 1936 & his report on the harsh social conditions he found there (the first part of this book) pulls no punches. No-one before or since has done reporterage like George Orwell & the vividness & directness of his prose with its underlying blazing committment to social justice strikes the reader, even at this remove of time. Orwell's descriptions, couched in his superb prose, will remain in your mind for ever & should be re-read by everyone as a reminder of just how harsh life was for many people, within living memory. Orwell is particularly good about the desperation, the struggle with respectability & the terrible psychological & social toll of unemployment & poverty.
The second part of the book charts Orwell's personal odyssey from public schoolboy & officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma to crusading Left-wing author & journalist. Along the way Orwell expounds his personal strategy for Socialism. Although dated, his insights are fascinating, describing as they do the origins of the class struggle ideas that infested & inflamed British politics right up to the 1990s. Orwell is bitingly caustic about many of his fellow Socialists, castigating the obsession with mechanical progress, the worship of Russia & the crank tendencies (still evident in the British Labour Party) - "...the dreary tribe of high-minded women...and the bearded fruit-juice drinkers that flock to the idea of 'progress' like bluebottles do to a dead cat". With incredible prescience Orwell identifies the factors that would eventuallly kill the traditional "Old" Labour Party - firstly - the dichotomy between the Labour voter in the street (who, by & large, wanted/wants a better standard of living from better working & living conditions), & the "orthodox" hierarchy & activists of the Labour Party (who, by & large, at least in theory wanted a complete change in society), secondly - the accretion on to socialist politics of a huge amount of crank ideas (Orwell's acerbic & caustic put-downs of crank thought forms some of the book's most memorable, & funniest, passages).
What Orwell cannot have forseen was that the second war, the moderate 1945 Labour government, the end of the British Empire, Baroness Thatcher & the rise of a knowledge, finance & service based economy would change the face of England permanently. But however dated the social & political conditions under which he wrote, George Orwell is always worth reading, always hard-hitting, always vivid & detailed, always committed & honest, often hilariously funny.
Read this book, read everything that George Orwell wrote.
Its Grim up North! - By: , 13 Apr 2002 Quite how Orwell can manage to make the price of groceries in pre-war England compulsive reading is a little puzzling, but this essay compiled on a protracted journey around this country's northern industrial towns is once again a shining example of Orwell's uncomplicated & conversational style. Though the reportage is characteristicallly charged with Orwell's socialist dogma, it should have appeal far beyond the socialist reader for its vivid renderings of these towns & their inhabitants. The passages describing the work & living conditions of these people are particularly enlightening & Orwell reallly colours the north of the past for those who - like Orwell at the time - rarely stray beyond the Watford Gap. The essay, while only reallly a record of the past, still manages somehow to be an eye-opener, & is tinted with that irresistible darkness, present in so much of Orwell's pre-war work of a world & a society teetering on the brink of a disastrous but necessary changing of the order.
Perhaps predictably, Orwell never arrives at the symbol of escape from the difficult lives of his characters, Wigan Pier.
