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  • The Road to Wigan Pier

  • By: George Orwell
  • Narrated by: Jeremy Northam
  • Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,723 ratings)
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The Road to Wigan Pier cover art

The Road to Wigan Pier

By: George Orwell
Narrated by: Jeremy Northam
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Summary

A graphic and biting polemic that still holds a fierce political relevance and impact despite being written over half a century ago. First published in 1937 it charts George Orwell's observations of working-class life during the 1930s in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His depictions of social injustice and rising unemployment, the dangerous working conditions in the mines amid general squalor and hunger also bring together many of the ideas explored in his later works and novels.

©2012 Canongate Books (P)2012 George Orwell

What listeners say about The Road to Wigan Pier

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Censored? A classic?

Please do not alter classic English Literature by bleeping out the swear word. It is an insult to any person with half a brain. Now I need to find a print copy to get the true context of a passage. Not impressed.

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92 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Faulty reviews - warning

Please note, from memory so called swear words were 'bleeped out' in the original book.

Thus you read 'b_____' and were left to fill in the 'bleep' yourself.

The narrator is then being true to the book and the reviews criticising the decision to bleep are faulty.

NB I am an adult also and do not like censorship or bleeping.

But in this case a decision was made to be true to the text and the time.

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87 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • M
  • 15-10-12

Road to Wigan Pier

I had a vague idea what this book was about - a middle class George Orwell goes 'Up North' to see how the working classes live - but I wasn't expecting it to be such a personally touching story. My family are from West Yorkshire and, as far back as we can go, we have been miners, living in the small mining communities that are described in The Road To Wigan Pier. Infact, my Grandad started down the pit in 1937 - as a 15 year old boy, the year this book was published - and the descriptions of the lives and homes of the mining families really hit home for me. The visceral account of how the miners would have to crawl through miles of dark and dusty tunnels before they even reached the coal face - and then do their 7 hours of difficult and dangerous graft before making the return trip - made my knees and back ache in sympathy for my young Grandad; no doubt it would have been my lot had I been born 50 years earlier.

Orwell's writing is superb, and this first half of the book flew by, but I wasn't expecting the sudden shift into polemic that takes up the second half and I kinda lost the flow for a while, but it turned out to be a very interesting insight into that strange period - just before WWII - when Fascism, Socialism and Capitalism were fighting for dominance. And, interestingly, many of his arguments about what was wrong in society rang true for our own times: unemployment, housing shortages, the poor eating junk food, and the onslaught of crass media, cheap clothes and technological toys that distracted the masses from engaging in meaningful debate or action.

So overall this was an extremely interesting read - if not an entertaining one - and I would thoroughly recommend it.

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86 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting book. Disappointing censorship.

The book is very interesting if a bit of a slow starter. Great insight in to past English working class living conditions. Some words were bleeped out, which is obviously an issue with audible. There should be an option to turn off bleeping.

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71 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Life-changing book that's perfect for audio

Finished listening to an Audible download of Road To Wigan Pier today and it is a truly astounding book. I think, had I encountered it 80 years ago, it would have been life-changing. Plus there is still so much that is completely relevant now and it is interesting to see how much of Orwell's future prognosis has come to pass. I am sure that much of my enjoyment of the work was due to Jeremy's excellent and impassioned narration. The second part moves from social observation to political ideology and, had I been just reading, I possibly would have got lost and given up. However, having the audio made it feel as though the different ideas and perspectives were being explained just to me(!) and I now have a far better understanding of the politics of the time.

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41 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A great book, made better by a great reading.

I've been listening to audiobooks for years now and can comfortably say that this is a real gem of a reading. Orwell's writing is compelling and the subject matter has a particular meaning for me since both of my grandfathers were miners in the era Orwell describes so the first half of the book is just brilliant.



What really makes this shine is that Jeremy Northam really picks up and runs with Orwell's passion in not only the first part of the book but also the second part: a political essay which I suspect could seem dull and ranty in the hands of a lesser reader. It's so good I shall almost certainly listen to this audiobook again, something I this far have never felt the need to do.

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Orwell at his best

Where does The Road to Wigan Pier rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Fascinating combination of personal experience, political comment and a masterful appeal to hope. One of the last of Orwells books which I have encountered personally. But one of the best.


ps. Would be nice if Audible stopped treating its customers like idiots and let us write reviews that are free form. All these questions make reviews harder to read and less reliable as the format tends to obscure the priorities of the reviewer, which is critical in assessing their likely relevance.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Socialism Views Made Clear

"Our only hope is in the Prols". Orwell has this message whispered through this work. Again he experiences privation to gain true understanding of the society he is to write about. He speaks realistically about the working class; about what their immediate needs are and also what holds them back. This includes their own mind forged manacles. If the reader is looking for some light reading, keep looking. This is a serious and brilliant work by perhaps the greatest writer of the 20th century.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Indispensable

A classic of polemical journalism. Jeremy Northam captures Orwell's tone, both narrative and polemical, perfectly. I listened to it on a train ride from Glasgow to London and the time simply flew by.

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16 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

a insight to the hard wigan past history

with being born and breed in wigan and my grand father was a pit man. I found it very Intresting. and I relise now how hard it must have been for him working down the pit and bringing up 7 children alone due to the early death of my grand mother.

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14 people found this helpful