The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell

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“Writing at a time when mild was still fivepence a pint (between 1936 and 1941 rearmament only raised it by a penny), the Mass Observers found that in Worktown' the regular pub-goer was putting away, on average, between fifteen and twenty pints a week. This sounds a good deal, but it is unquestionable that in the past seventy years the annual consumption of beer per head has decreased by nearly two thirds, and it is the Mass Observers' conclusion that 'the pub as a cultural institution is at present declining'. This happens not merely because of persecution by Nonconformist town councils, nor even primarily because of the increased price of drink, but because the whole trend of the age is away from creative communal amusements and towards solitary mechanical ones. The pub, with its elaborate social ritual, its animated conversations and - at any rate in the North of England - its songs and weekend comedians, is gradually replaced by the passive, drug-like pleasures of the cinema and the radio.”