5.0 out of 5 based on 1 reviews. – Customer review on 14/04/2010

In Orwell's time there was no longer a pier at Wigan. Rather "all around there was the lunar landscape of slag heaps...the canal path a mixture of cinders and frozen mud"...with pools of stagnant water filling hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient coal mining pits. "It was horribly cold."

Here lies Orwell's bleak and mordant view of a small and already irrelevant piece of Lancashire's depression-era canal system.


Isn't it ironic that the still non-existent Wigan Pier, on the basis of Orwell's scant endorsement, has gone on to become a major tourist destination, replete with four dance clubs, galleries, restaurants, shops and pubs!

All due to the tongue-in-cheek title of a finely observed book that still stirs indignation at yet another example of man;s inhumanity to man.