NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

ANIMAL FARM

Farm animals drive out their masters and set out to govern on the principle that 'all animals are equal'. Fairly rapidly some animals become 'more equal than others'. A modern fable on the history of a revolution, with excellent excuses at every step of the descent into dictatorship for each perversion of the original ideas.

BURMESE DAYS

Based on his experiences as a policeman in Burma, George Orwell's first novel presents a devastating picture of British colonial rule. Flory, a white timber merchant, defies the prevalent belief that natives are different by befriending Dr Veraswami, an Indian doctor.

COMING UP FOR AIR

George Bowling, forty-five, married with children, is desperate to escape his dreary life. He decides to return to the village where he grew up, a place he remembers as a haven of peace and tranquillity . Unfortunately during his absence the village has changed and the enterprise is doomed to disillusionment.

DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON

George Orwell's acclaimed memoir of his time among the poor and destitute in London and Paris. He documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor; sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, living alongside tramps and surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like.

KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING

Gordon Comstock, a copywriter, gives up his job in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop and to devote more time to his own writing. He slides into poverty and depression but is persuaded by his faithful companion, Rosemary, to set off on a voyage of discovery.

THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.