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The talk, entitled Wigan, the World and Everywhere in Between – How We Build a Country That Works, will be given at 7pm on Tuesday, December 6 at University College London, home of the Orwell Archive.

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The Orwell memorial lecture – which commemorates the author, essayist and journalist George Orwell – has been given annually since 1989 and has attracted notable speakers including Ian McEwan, Dame Hilary Mantel, Daniel Finkelstein and Ruth Davidson MSP.

George Orwell with his adopted son Richard Blair.

Speakers are tasked with discussing any topic that might have interested him.

Orwell first visited Wigan between January and March 1936 while reporting on working-class life in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

His resulting book The Road to Wigan Pier – part-social reportage, part-socialist polemic – was published in 1937, while he fought in the Spanish Civil War.

The lecture is sponsored and supported by Orwell’s son Richard Blair.

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