Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pseudonym George Orwell wrote some interesting books, yes we all know about Animal Farm and 1984 his most famous novels!
In 1936 he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among the working class in depressed areas of the north of England. He toured Lancashire and Yorkshire and wrote 'The Road to Wigan Pier'.
Below are some quotes from the book, which I found lurking in a folder on my computer. I like them and I hope you do too!
“… but even water, when it gets north of a certain latitude, ceases to be H²O and becomes something mystically superior.”
George Orwell: “The Road to Wigan Pier” 1937
“I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the ‘flashes’ – pools of stagnant water that has seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The ‘flashes’ were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful compared with Sheffield.”
George Orwell: “The Road to Wigan Pier” 1937
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