A collection of Orwell’s compellingly perceptive essays on subjects from food to weather to unemployment, edited and introduced by Professor Michael Gardiner.

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent ...

Deals with the working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, the Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. This title includes descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, and more.

Features that illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, this essays create a literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move and entertain.

Now presented in a new annotated edition, The Road to Wigan Pier represents a unique record of a society riven by class inequality and plagued by unemployment, inadequate housing, unsafe working conditions and other social ills, as well as providing an invaluable insight into the evolution of Orwell's political consciousness.