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The detour into Dickens and contemporaries is very worth reading. So insightful.

“The clock has stopped in 1910”
this is so resonant.

It is worth noticing that in papers of this type it is always taken for granted that adventures only happen at the ends of the earth, in tropical forests, in Arctic wastes, in African deserts, on Western prairies, in Chinese opium denseverywhere in fact, except the places where things really DO happen

“In papers of this kind it occasionally happens that when the setting of a story is in a foreign country some attempt is made to describe the natives as individual human beings, but as a rule it is assumed that foreigners of any one race are all alike and will conform more or less exactly to the following patterns:”
… for this section along the essay is gold. It outlines the suppressed stereotypes in one place

I have spoken of the militia uniform, which probably gives a wrong impression. It was not exactly a uniform. Perhaps a multiform would be the proper name for it. Everyones clothes followed the same general plan, but they were never quite the same in any two cases.

“And here you observe the huge contradiction which is usually present in the idea of progress. The tendency of mechanical progress is to make your environment safe and soft; and yet you are striving to keep yourself brave and hard. You are at the same moment furiously pressing forward and desperately holding back.”

Read chapter 12
I was only reading this book as part me Orwell completest mission and while the life of coal miners was interesting, the middle of the book was slowly stagnant. Then I reached the second to last chapter. It should be a stand alone work - it is accessible and outlines the fundamental conflict in our times mechanising the world.

Sometimes it’s really easy to forget that in the 30s plastics were not even a thing in the mind of the future.
“Where there is one aeroplane now, in those days there will be fifty! All the work that is now done by hand will then be done by machinery: everything that is now made of leather, wood, or stone will be made of rubber, glass, or steel; there will be no disorder..”

…but the effect of industrialism is to make it impossible for anyone to be self-supporting even for a moment. Industrialism, once it rises above a fairly low level, must lead to some form of collectivism…

In Wigan various people gave me their opinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible. Teeth is just a misery, one woman said to me

Now I’ve finished all his novels, next are his Memoirs.

“I wondered why it is that were all such bloody fools. Why dont people, instead of the idiocies they do spend their time on, just walk round LOOKING at things?”
#nature

Youve had dinner, I gather? said Ravelston, in his rather Bloomsbury voice.
Yes, ages ago. Havent you?
Oh, yes, certainly. Oh, quite!
It was twenty past eight and Gordon had had no food since midday. Neither had Ravelston. Gordon did not know that Ravelston was hungry, but Ravelston knew that Gordon was hungry, and Gordon knew that Ravelston knew it. Nevertheless, each saw good reason for pretending not to be hungry.

“She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be the kind of girl that men habitually pester. For when a man wants a little casual amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not TOO pretty. Pretty girls (so he reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious; but plain girls are easy game.”