Headingley LitFest: January 2022

Monday 31 January 2022

Wigan Pier. The facts.

It is an Orwellian joke - Wigan's 'pier' was never a seaside attraction, just a couple of bent-up rails where coal-wagons once tipped their loads into barges. Orwell "liked Wigan very much - the people not the scenery" according to Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who features in this Daily Mirror article from 2017 "We follow George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier where poverty is now worse than the 1930s". I doubt things have improved much since 2017. Have you got Saturday 5 March in your diary yet?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/follow-george-orwells-road-wigan-5583390

Wednesday 19 January 2022

George Orwell in Headingley

Richard Wilcocks writes:

It's all coming together for our Road to Wigan Pier event on Saturday 5 March! Yesterday, I knocked on the door of 21 Estcourt Avenue in Headingley, a tall, Victorian terrace house, to find who lives there. Happily, the door was opened by Theo, who turned out to be a student of English who knows about the work of George Orwell but who had no idea that he had stayed at number 21 in late 1936 when his sister lived there. It seems Orwell used his time walking to local landmarks like Kirkstall Abbey and collating his extensive notes on his journey round the north of England documenting the great poverty and deprivation he found there.

Theo and his flatmates have said that they will join the crowd outside the house at 1.30pm on 5 March, which is when local actor and musician Jem Dobbs will say a few things about when he lived in the same house for his first nineteen years after being born in it. With luck, he will play his trumpet and he will lead everybody on a short walk to the HEART Centre in Bennett Road.

Jem Dobbs

At 2pm our tribute begins, when Les Hurst from the Orwell Society will talk about The Road to Wigan Pier, which was found to be quite shocking in 1937, when it was published by the Left Book Club. A lot of people who lived in the south had no idea about the adult and child poverty and the awful working conditions in the north. There will be readings from the book - a few of the most memorable bits - and a Q & A will follow. Orwell devoted a substantial section of the book to his idiosyncratic musings on the nature of Socialism, and these will no doubt be addressed in any discussions. Several people have told me that they would like to make a connection with the poverty and general neglect by central government to be found today in the same areas that Orwell wrote about.

If you are unable to join us on the walk, try to make it to the HEART Centre for 2pm. PWYF

Wikipedia entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier

RESERVE YOUR PLACE AT THE HEART CENTRE!

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.