DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON

Towards the end of the 1920s, whilst living in Paris, George Orwell’s few remaining funds are stolen and he quickly falls into a life of severe poverty. Living hand to mouth, he shares squalid lodgings with Russian-born Boris and finds tedious and back-breaking work washing up in the bowels of Paris restaurant kitchens. On his return to England, he lives as a tramp, finding occasional shelter in often dangerous doss houses.

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`The thief who took the last of an ailing George Orwell’s money from his Paris room in 1929 did a big favour to political literature.` - Vanessa Thorpe, Observer

`Little that Orwell has written, here and elsewhere, has lost the hum of relevancy, from the causes of poverty and its long-term effects – “it annihilates the future” – to its everyday toll of boredom.` - Laurence Mackin, Irish Times

`Down and Out is an extraordinary and curious book: beautifully phrased, meticulous, honest and funny. George Orwell’s 1933 memoir, and a study of poverty, is a book both rooted in its era and able to transcend it.` - Independent