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Bill Bryson (1995)

Saturday 16th October, 2010

Bill Bryson is an American who settled in England in 1977. In the mid 1990s he decided to move back to the USA, but before doing so made a “valedictory” tour of his adopted country. This resulted in an interesting, and very readable book called “Notes from a Small Island”. In it, he travels mostly by public transport, criss-crossing the country and staying in a variety of guest houses and hotels.

He expresses his opinions of the places he visits very elegantly and sometimes rather bluntly. For example, he describes Princes Street, Edinburgh in the following uncomplimentary way:

“At the eastern end of the street the whole of St. James' Square, an open green space surrounded by a crowd of eighteenth-century tenements, was bulldozed to make way for one of the squattest, ugliest shopping centre/hotel complexes ever to spill from an architect's pen. Now about all that is left of Princes Street's age of confident grandeur are odd fragments like the Balmoral Hotel and the Scott Memorial and part of the front of Jenners Department Store.”

So what were Bryson's impressions of Wigan?

He appears to have approved. He came apparently on a whim when he saw a Wigan bus at Manchester Piccadilly and decided to climb on - a decision prompted by the fact that he just happened to have Orwell's “The Road to Wigan Pier” in his pocket at the time.

He describes the town centre as “handsome and well maintained” and “prosperous” . He was “astounded” to find it so appealing, especially considering Wigan's poor reputation.

Most of all he approves of the “Galleries” shopping centre, which was then just a few years old. He likes the way that the “talented architect” had incorporated it into “the existing fabric of the buildings in a simple but deceptively clever... way...”

In fact, Bryson finds little to criticise in Wigan. He appears to have enjoyed his stay here.

While on his way he read parts of “The Road to Wigan Pier”, and could not reconcile what he saw from the bus window with Orwell's descriptions of the same area.

Also, like me, he seems suspicious of Orwell's perception of the people of the area, stating:

“Orwell... regarded the labouring classes... as a strange but interesting anthropological phenomenon...”

“...I've had my doubts about old George frankly. Certainly he makes the working class of the 1930s seem disgustingly filthy, but in fact every piece of evidence I've ever seen shows that most of them were almost obsessively dedicated to cleanliness.”

I have just a few quibbles about Bryson's depiction of the town. He describes the Pier as “...just an old coal shed on the side of the Leeds-to-Liverpool Canal.” And he appears to have been of the opinion that Trencherfield was a working mill.

Finally, to celebrate his trip to Wigan he went to the Corinthia Coffee Lounge and indulged himself with “a cup of tea and a sticky bun” - had he not heard of Wigan's pies?

Bill Bryson in Wikipedia

George Orwell, part 1

George Orwell, part 2

George Orwell, part 3

Below is Bryson's description of Wigan's town centre:

“So I walked into the centre, a fair hike but a not unrewarding one. Such is Wigan's perennially poor reputation that I was truly astounded to find it has a handsome and well-maintained town centre. The shops seemed prosperous and busy and there were lots of public benches to sit on for the many people unable to take an active part in all the economic activity around them. Some talented architect had managed to incorporate a new shopping arcade into the existing fabric of the buildings in a simple but deceptively clever and effective way by making the glass canopy of the entrance match the line of the gables of the surrounding structures. The result was an entrance that was bright and modern but pleasantly harmonious – precisely the sort of thing I've been going on about for all these many pages – and I was delighted to think that if this sort of thing is going to happen just once in Britain that it should be in poor beleaguered Wigan.”