In the winter of 1927, George Orwell dropped his aitches, pulled on his distressed tailored trousers, and took the first of many trips to the underbelly of London society. Over the following years, he spent long stints amongst the homeless and starving people of both Paris and London. He collected these experiences into his first book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), conveniently leaving out the weekends and kitchen sups with mater and pater.

Orwell’s intention was partly to draw attention to the appalling social inequality of France and England after the First World War, but also simply to allow his imagination to wallow in scenes of surreal vividness and black humour. 

In this - the first in a four-part series about Orwell’s life, work and times - Sophie and Jonty look at the circumstances that lead to his first, and still one of his best-loved, books. They focus on two of his most famous essays that provide unique insights into his early years. 

In Such, Such Were the Joys, Orwell wrote about his experience of English boarding school, where he developed an ineradicable sense of himself as intrinsically doomed and disgusting, of a world where bullies will always triumph and where the underdog can never win. In Shooting an Elephant, Orwell recounts his years working for the Indian Police in the 1920s and his realisation that the British Empire was a corrupt, murderous regime. 

Finally, Sophie and Jonty follow Orwell into the mean streets of Paris’ 5th arrondissement and London’s Whitechapel, the scenes of brutality that follow and a truly bizarre encounter with another Old Etonian in a slum lodging-house. 

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Content warning: mild bad language 

Books mentioned: 

Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor 

WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder 

Essays by George Orwell

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell 

David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens 

New Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing 

Nadja by (1928) Andre Breton 

Paris Peasant by (1926) Louis Aragon 

Tom Jones (1749) - as ever - by Henry Fielding 

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) - as ever - by Jonathan Swift 

Tales of Mean Streets (1894) by Arthur Morrison 

People of the Abyss (1904) by Jack London 

Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller 

Kitchen Confidential (2000) by Anthony Bourdain 

The Tramp Ward (1904) by Mary Higgs 

Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) by WH Davies 

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