Aggressor in Paris and London

George Orwell

"You can live on a shilling a day in Paris if you know how. But it's a complicated matter."

As a struggling writer in his twenties, Orwell lived among the poorest members of society. In these early memoirs, he vividly recalls his time working as a penniless dishwasher in Paris, pawning clothes to buy a day's worth of bread and wine, sleeping in bedbug-infested beds, bartering survival skills and cigarette butts with fellow vagrants, and bouncing between the pillars of London's nursing homes for a few hours of sleep and tea. With the sensitivity and empathy for which Orwell was known and loved, he exposed the hardships of poverty and gave readers an unprecedented insight into life on the margins of society.

This vital narrative is a lasting call to support the world's most vulnerable people and embodies his belief that "the greatest evil and the worst crime is poverty."

With an introduction by Kerry Hudson