Letchworth - Literary References

Literary References

• "The Lion and the Unicorn" In his polemic essay on wartime Britain, George Orwell said "The place to look for the germs of the future England is in light-industry areas and along the arterial roads. In Slough, Dagenham, Barnet, Letchworth, Hayes - everywhere, indeed, on the outskirts of great towns - the old pattern is gradually changing into something new" and added that "every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England" lived in the town.

• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish In the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Ford Prefect complains about the difficulty of persuading telephone operators that he is calling from Letchworth when tapping into the British phone system from the Pleiades. Remarkably a new Coat of Arms, issued for the Garden City Council in December 2010, includes a motto (Share, Enjoy, Prosper) that is almost exactly the same as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division" (Share and Enjoy).

• Bigipedia (Series 1, episode 2) included reference to the "Letchworth Dog" - a fictional legend about a mysterious animal supposedly seen in the town in 1908.