This is a suggested reading list to tie in with our production Orwell’s Down and Out: Live. If you have any suggestions for titles that should be included, please get in touch.
The focus here is primarily, but not exclusively, poverty, homelessness and rough-sleeping in the UK and France in the modern era. Over the year we’ll also be featuring quotes from Orwell’s writing on poverty and homelessness on our Orwell Quotes Twitter account. Many resources – including essays by and about Orwell – are available on our website.
George Orwell on poverty, homelessness and rough sleeping
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Many of Orwell’s essays are available for free on the Orwell Foundation website, courtesy of the Orwell Estate, including:
The Orwell Diaries, a Webby nominated project
Contemporary Non-fiction
The New Poverty, by Stephen Armstrong
- Stephen Armstrong’s The New Poverty (Verso, 2017), which examines the new contours of want in the UK and tells the story of some of society’s most vulnerable people, draws on reporting from the Orwell Foundation’s Unreported Britain project.
Poverty Safari, by Darren McGarvey
- Shortlisted for The Orwell Prize 2018
- Anna Minton was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2018
The Road to Wigan Pier: Revisited, by Stephen Armstrong
Hard Work, by Polly Toynbee
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain, by James Bloodworth
A Street Cat Named Bob, by James Bowen
Stuart: A Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters
A Girl Called Jack, by Jack Monroe
The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, by WH Davies
The Grass Arena, by John Healy
Tell Them Who I Am, by Elliot Liebow
Contemporary Young Adult and Children’s
Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson
The Bed and Breakfast Kid, by Jacqueline Wilson
Skellig, by David Almond
Stone Cold, by Robert Swindells
Warehouse, by Keith Gray
The Girl In Between, by Sarah Carroll