Turns out Road to Wigan Pier - a book by George Orwell, though this one's without the pseudonym, so it's really written by Eric Arthur Blair, so I'm going to call him Eric to refer to the person and Orwell as his brand - is actually two books in one. The first half is thorough reporting on the poverty of coal mining communities in Britain during the 1940s, a very interesting look into the poverty of the very recent past:

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