George Orwell

Published: 3 May 2025
Last updated: 14 Jan 2026

Down and Out in Paris and London

Down and Out in Paris and London book cover

It is one thing to read about poverty in the abstract, in statistics, and in newspaper headlines - it is quite another to read the harsh truth and reality of poverty up-front and first-hand. Orwell retells his own, and other numerous struggles to get by and survive at rock bottom, initially outlining the many attempts to get work in a restaurant in Paris as a plonguer (detailing both astonishingly long hours, horrendous working conditions and the convoluted caste-system of restaurant workers) to eek out a living in the first half whilst negotiating a return to steady work back in London, only to return to an absent employer and joining a ever-moving cadre of tramps to survive. There is some inherent “inauthenticity” that has to be acknowledged in this (potentially semi-fictional?) poverty memoir due to Orwell’s background (he can always borrow money and seek refuge from family and fellow Etonians) - but Orwell’s authorial intention is clearly to document the plight and living situations of the very lowest rung of society to other’s similar to Orwell’s upper-class standing (with some added commentary observing on why beggars are universally despised by society, what said beggars actually need and how the state could improve their plight), and in this aspect, the book is timeless. There is also plenty that shows its age as unsurprisingly, the societal norms of views of the “unwashed masses” in the 20s are not up to current day, antisemitism and sexism run rampant (rape of a prostitute told for laughs for example, quoted without comment by Orwell) - mainly from the numerous characters that Orwell quotes and describes, but much from Orwell itself.

Its well written, very descriptive and excellent at painting the picture of the raw poverty depicted. Not a “coherent narrative”, but I don’t think this either needs or intends to be, these vignettes and snapshots of life at its very grimmest and harshest loosely strung together - and while we know that Orwell will eventually extricate himself from his gruelling destitution, the same cannot be said for the numerous denizens of restaurant workers, cafe loafers, workhouse tramps and street beggars of all backgrounds, either having descended into poverty or never given the opportunity to escape the drudgery and misery.

“You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.”

Homage To Catalonia

Homage To Catalonia book cover

A great memoir on the Spanish Civil War, originating from Orwell’s simple desire to “fight Fascism”, outlining the both the initial enthusiasm and revolutionary spirit in Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole under the POUM/Anarchists felt by the local populous (and its subsequent disappearance, crushed under the byzantine politics), the total pointlessness and futility of pure trench warfare, as well as some observations of Catalonia as a whole, viewed through a rather “English” lens (namely a few running jokes/stereotypes, namely their generosity, laid-back nature, poor timekeeping and terrible marksmanship). A lot of it is rather mundane, emphasising the fruitlessness of Orwell’s initial endeavour and showing the pure drudgery of trench warfare on a moribund front without sleep, comfort or resources - but there are also several fantastic passages that stand out, namely the rare raid on a Fascist trench, the experience of having been shot in the throat and his subsequent lengthy recovery in battlefield hospitals and the race to escape Spain post-discharge as arcane political machinations crackdown on the POUM, the organisation that Orwell initially joined to volunteer.

A caveat that I found this much more enjoyable on a re-read with some existing background knowledge of the Spanish Civil War (Orwell’s chapters on the politics are relegated to the appendix in my version, and rightly so given the dizzying political situation that Orwell can only try and fail to understand).