Place explored through a personal selection of the lives, novels, art, architecture, poetry and history inspired by England's industrial era.
Orwell in Southwold, by Ronald Binns
A visitor would be forgiven for leaving the town without the faintest idea that it was George Orwell’s childhood home. Significant characters from Orwell’s time in Southwold later appear in his writing as vagrants, or the tortured. Ronald Binn’s entertaining work, a mixture of research, gossip, and credible speculation, makes for an entertaining read. It left me with a greater understanding of the man, the world he inhabited, and what might have motivated him to write what he did. Orwell described the Suffolk seaside town (where a beach hut can currently set you back over £100,000) as ‘a claustrophobic, small-town pit of gossip and conservatism.’ (Binns: 92). at least Orwell was partial to Adnam’s Beer.
Now, about that statue…
Orwell in Southwold (2018) Ronald Binns
Zoilus Press 138 Pages
Beryl Bainbridge Bradford Castleford CLR James Comedian Ian Smith Cultural Geography Ellen Wilkinson England is Rich Featherstone George Orwell Gerard Benson Get Carter Goole Halifax Harry Hopkins Huddersfield Iain Nairn Isle of Axholme Jack Common JB Priestley Kellingley Kevin Boniface Killingworth Manuscript in a Red Box Minty Alley Morning in the City Nelson Newbiggin-By-The-Sea Newcastle Normanton Pontefract Pre-Raphaelite Psychogeography Robert Westall Rotherham Sean O'Brien Selby Social History Southwold Stuart Maconie Ted Lewis The Division Bell Mystery The Rocket Tom Puddings Vermuyden
Places and Cultural Traces 