COMING UP FOR AIR

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.

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.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

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.