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The Road To Wigan Pier
''The Road to Wigan Pier'' is a book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism, but feels it necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong opponents. According to Orwell biographer Bernard Crick, publisher Victor Gollancz first tried to persuade Orwell's agent to allow the Left Book Club edition to consist solely of the descriptive first half of the book. When this was refused Gollancz wrote an introduction to the book. "Victor co ...
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Left Book Club
The Left Book Club was a publishing group that exerted a strong left-wing influence in Great Britain from 1936 to 1948. Pioneered by Victor Gollancz, it offered a monthly book choice, for sale to members only, as well as a newsletter that acquired the status of a major political magazine. It also held an annual rally. Membership peaked at 57,000, but after the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact of 1939, it disowned its large Communist element, and subsequent years of paper-rationing, during and after the war, led to further decline. It ceased publishing in 1948. The concept and series was revived in 2015, following at least one earlier effort to relaunch the series in the early 2000s. Early success and organisation The Left Book Club, founded in May 1936, was a key left-wing institution of the late 1930s and the 1940s in the United Kingdom. It was set up by Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and John Strachey to revitalise and educate the British Left.... The club's aim was to ...
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Wigan
Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the north-east and Warrington to the south. It is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and is its administrative centre. The town has a population of 107,732 and the wider borough of 330,713. Wigan was formerly within the historic county of Lancashire. Wigan was in the territory of the Brigantes, an ancient Celtic tribe that ruled much of what is now northern England. The Brigantes were subjugated in the Roman conquest of Britain and the Roman settlement of ''Coccium'' was established where Wigan lies. Wigan was incorporated as a borough in 1246, following the issue of a charter by King Henry III of England. At the end of the Middle Ages, it was one of four boroughs in Lancashire established by Royal charter. The Industrial Revolution saw ...
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Jack Hilton (author)
Jack Hilton (21 January 1900 – 26 May 1983) was a British outsider novelist and essayist adopted into the modernist movement of the 1930s. Hilton's works were experimental, using semi-autobiographical first-person narratives and internal monologue to probe the relation of events in his life - and the lives of his characters - to the feelings and attitudes of himself and his subjects. His writing was also unconventional at the time of its publication for its proud but critical depictions of working-class people and settings, centring on his native Lancashire. Born into a large working-class family, Hilton grew up in a slum before starting work in a cotton mill at the age of eleven. He fought in the First World War before a period of several years as a vagabond. Upon settling in Rochdale in the latter half of the 1920s, he took up odd jobs in the building trade. During the Great Depression he began to organise for the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. After a protest in ...
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National Unemployed Workers' Movement
The National Unemployed Workers' Movement was a British organisation set up in 1921 by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It aimed to draw attention to the plight of unemployed workers during the post First World War slump, the 1926 General Strike and later the Great Depression, and to fight the Means Test. Activities The NUWM was founded by Wal Hannington, and led in Scotland by Harry McShane. From 1921 until 1929 it was called the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement. The NUWM became the foremost body responsible for organising the unemployed on a national basis in the interwar period, these years being characterised by high levels of unemployment. A central element of its activities was a series of hunger marches to London, organised in 1922, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936. The largest of these was the National Hunger March, 1932, that was followed by some days of serious violence across central London with 75 people being badly injured, which in turn le ...
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The Adelphi
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun '' thee'') when followed by a ...
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Richard Rees
Sir Richard Lodowick Edward Montagu Rees, 2nd Baronet (4 April 1900 – 24 July 1970) was a British diplomat, writer and painter. Rees was the son of Sir John Rees, 1st Baronet and his wife Mary Catherine Dormer. His sister was the pilot Rosemary Rees, Lady du Cros, MBE. He was educated at West Downs School, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. His father, who had been an administrator in British India and a Liberal politician, died in 1922 and he inherited the baronetcy. He was for a while an attache at the British Embassy in Berlin. In 1925 he became a lecturer at the Worker's Educational Association in London, and also acted as Treasurer there. He became editor of '' Adelphi'' in 1930, where he provided encouragement to George Orwell among others. He was the inspiration for the wealthy Ravelston, publisher of the socialist magazine ''Antichrist'', in Orwell's '' Keep the Aspidistra Flying''. In the Spanish Civil War he drove ambulances in Catalonia.Tom Buchanan ''The ...
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Kentish Town
Kentish Town is an area of northwest London, England in the London Borough of Camden, immediately north of Camden Town. Less than four miles north of central London, Kentish Town has good transport connections and is situated close to the open spaces of Hampstead Heath. Toponymy The name of Kentish Town is probably derived from ''Ken-ditch'' or ''Caen-ditch'', meaning the "bed of a waterway" and is otherwise unrelated to the English county of Kent. In researching the meaning of ''Ken-ditch'', it has also been noted that ''ken'' is the Celtic word for both "green" and "river", while ''ditch'' refers to the River Fleet, now a subterranean river. However, another theory is the name comes from its position near the Fleet; it has been suggested that Kentish Town, which lies in between two forks of the Fleet, takes its name from ''cant'' or ''cantle'' (from the Middle English meaning "corner"). History Kentish Town was originally a small settlement on the River Fleet (the waterway ...
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Jack Common
Jack Common (15 August 1903 – 20 January 1968) was a British socialist, essayist and novelist. Writing Common's writing was warm, ironic and quirky. He soon won admirers throughout the 1930s as a writer with a genuine proletarian viewpoint, as distinct from the purveyors of middle-class Marxist fiction. He was invited in 1930 by John Middleton Murry, founder and editor ''The Adelphi'', who had noticed an essay he had written, to become circulation promoter and later assistant editor of the magazine. For a period in 1936 he was acting editor, and a collection of his articles ''The Freedom of the Streets'' appeared in 1938. V.S. Pritchett considered the book to have been the most influential in his life, and George Orwell heard in the essays 'the authentic voice of the ordinary working man, the man who might infuse a new decency into the control of affairs if only he could get there, but who in practice never seems to get much further than the trenches, the sweatshop and the ...
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Michael Shelden
Michael Shelden (born 1951) is an American biographer and teacher, notable for his authorized biography of George Orwell, his history of Cyril Connolly’s ''Horizon'' magazine, his controversial biography of Graham Greene, and his study of the last years of Mark Twain, ''Man in White''. In March 2013 his ''Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill'' was published. In 2016 his biography of Herman Melville, ''Melville in Love'', was published by Ecco/HarperCollins. Education and career Born in Oklahoma, Shelden earned his Ph.D. in English from Indiana University in 1979. He then began teaching at Indiana State University, where he was promoted to professor of English in 1989, and where he remains a full-time member of the faculty. For ten years he was a fiction critic for ''The Baltimore Sun'', and from 1995 to 2007 he was a features writer for ''The Daily Telegraph'' of London, where he contributed several articles on notable figures in film, literature, and public affairs, inc ...
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Wallington, Hertfordshire
Wallington is a small village and civil parish in the North Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, near the town of Baldock. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 150. Nearby villages include Rushden and Sandon. It shares a parish council with Rushden. ThChurch of St Maryis a Grade II* listed building lying at the southern end of the village. The nave, west tower and windows date from the mid-15th Century. The chancel was rebuilt in 1864. The Icknield Way Path passes through the village on its 110-mile journey from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Knettishall Heath in Suffolk. File:StMaryChurchWallingtonHertz.jpg, Interior view. Church of St Mary, Wallington. File:No 2 Kits Lane, Wallington 2020-07-18.jpg, No 2 Kits Lane, Wallington. George Orwell residence circa 1936–1940 File:WallingtonHertzUKmap.jpg, Map of Wallington File:WallingtonHertzUKbooklets.jpg, Booklets available at St Mary Church in 2013. George Orwell The ...
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Omnibus (UK TV Series)
''Omnibus'' is an arts-based British documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC 1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the arts-based series ''Monitor''. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are: *''Song of Summer'' (1968) biographical film by Ken Russell about Frederick Delius and Eric Fenby *''Cracked Actor'' (1975), a profile of David Bowie during the peak of his cocaine addiction *''Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood'' (1978), follows American Gonzo Journalist Hunter S. Thompson and British artist Ralph Steadman on a trip to Hollywood during the development of a film based on Thompson's life and work. *''Rene Magritte'' (1979), a graduate film by David Wheatley; *'' Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story'' – a documentary about a 1984 studio recording o ...
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Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, (born 6 October 1939), is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian. He is best known for his work with ITV as editor and presenter of '' The South Bank Show'' (1978–2010), and for the BBC Radio 4 documentary series ''In Our Time''. Earlier in his career, Bragg worked for the BBC in various roles including presenter, a connection that resumed in 1988 when he began to host '' Start the Week'' on Radio 4. After his ennoblement in 1998, he switched to presenting the new ''In Our Time'', an academic discussion radio programme, which has run to over 900 broadcast editions and is a popular podcast. He was Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1999 until 2017. Early life Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Carlisle, the son of Stanley Bragg, a stock keeper turned mechanic, and Mary Ethel (née Park), a tailor; both the Braggs and Parks- both families of Cumberland- were agricultural labourers, also working at collieries and in domestic se ...
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