Down and Out in Paris and London

This book made a big impression on me during my 6th form days especially the images of smart restaurant kitchens.
And as a re-read 35 years later...the Paris bit was particularly vivid but the London section did come over as a bit didactic in the effort to make the point about tramp-dom and the treatment of down and outs - how much have things changed??

Loved this. I will never forget the heat in the kitchens of Hotel X.

Apparently selections of this are on Radio 3 tonight at 1015 in Words and Music. I read it as a teenager when my dad was living in France, working on beaches and fairgrounds and coffee shops, travelling around. So I remember it reminded me of him.

Hey, nice tip - you can listen online too http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio3.shtml?listen - i love the beeb :)

Many years ago...I recall it for the powerful sense of indignation and middle-class angst - the feeling that life and circumstances should not possibly be so unjust. Maybe it's time to fish some of them out again - Coming Up for Air also beckons.

I agree with you about Down and Out, but I suspect that if Orwell were writing today his editor would discourage him from including Charlie's story in chapter two.

have you read Clergyman's Daughter? A girl loses her memory and ends up down and out in London. Some of the things are relevant to today - the food vans and soup kitchens in London.

This book changed my life. It's Orwell's journalism at its most visceral and powerful. To write it, he spent months working in an oppressive 1930s Paris restaurant, where he was a skivvy, and then in London. He records the experience with an ice-cold brilliance, showing what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap and in poverty with no safety net and no welfare state.