In January 1936, the thirty-two-year-old George Orwell left his home in London and travelled to the industrial north of England with the intention of experiencing first-hand the conditions in which the working-class poor were compelled to live their lives. During his two-month expedition he visited Manchester, Wigan and Liverpool in the north-west, then Sheffield, Leeds and Barnsley in Yorkshire, recording his impressions as he went in a diary that would later form the basis of one of the most significant works of literary reportage ever written.
Part sociological survey, part polemic about the potential benefits of socialism – as well as the failures and idiosyncrasies of many of its middle-class exponents – The Road to Wigan Pier represents a unique record of a country riven by class inequality and plagued by unemployment, inadequate housing, unsafe working conditions and other social ills, and provides an invaluable insight into the evolution of Orwell’s political consciousness.
