This is why some have struggled with George Orwell’s tendency to put himself through difficulties in order to write about them. In the first half of The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), for instance, he describes his time among the working-class mining communities of the industrial north. In Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) he recounts his experiences of purposefully living for a time as homeless. Many of his essays have a similarly immersive quality. In ‘The Spike’ (1931) he stays for a night in a squalid workhouse in London. In ‘Clink’ (1932) he deliberately drinks to excess so that he will
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