The northern mill town of Wigan has an illustrious literary history as the setting for George Orwell’s 1937 investigation/memoir The Road to Wigan Pier. Nearly a century later another writer is using the locale as his backdrop. Although probably best known these days for rugby league and Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls, Wigan has a rich history encompassing medieval rivalries, the Crusades and the 17th-century persecution of Catholics, and it was a major centre of coal mining. At its peak, there were 1,000 pit shafts within five miles of the town centre; it’s a wonder it is not a vast sinkhole.