This is a non-fiction book that describes the living/working conditions of the working class people of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the 1930’s. Don’t let that put you off. It is a very interesting book to read, and thanks to the real talent of its author, it reads like a novel.

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George Orwell went ‘undercover’ to write this book. For a few months he went into working class (mostly miners) environments and lived amongst them. The result was this book where he documented their life as well as wrote his own comments about it. It is a very interesting work, even today. It has a lot to teach us about Britain’s social classes and folk-history. It is also a key work for anyone who is interested in political theory and social policy. It is a book written for an adult audience, but I would certainly gift it to a young person who in interested in social issues and political theories. It is an honest and thought provoking account. George Orwell, even though he considered himself a socialist at the time, wrote and thought unbounded by ideology.

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This book has a lot to offer to the sociologically-minded.