The Road to Wigan Pier

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading The Animal Farm and 1984 I appreciated G. Orwell but was not keen to read his other books. The inspiration came from unexpected source - Anna Funder - Wifedom.
After reading Wifedom I got interested to learn a bit more about Orwell's interests and style of work.
I think The Road to Wigan Pier answers these questions.
The book itself I found a bit strange - few chapters are devoted to very realistic description of life conditions of British proletariat - workers on pension or disability payments, miners at work, tramps.
Here Orwell does really good job - he goes to the source - crawls in low tunnels in coal mines, lives in accommodation for pensioners, hits a road as a tramp.
Unfortunately very soon Orwell changes position - he describes and analyses various aspects of British society.
It is maybe well done but in my opinion these issues got quickly outdated and are not so important for non-English reader.
So we got quite funny analysis of British class structure - differences between people from lower upper-middle and proper upper-middle class. Additionally it changes dramatically when you move to the North or West.
What I found more interesting was analysis of Socialism in England - its relation to Fascism, different approach of intellectuals and common people and very important remark that low level clerks and bureaucrats, most numerable group of working people, are not considered as "real" proletariat. I think this discovery leads straight to 1984 and The Animal Farm

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