THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Ticket holders will be contacted and will receive a refund. 

A head to head debate where advocates present their writer’s lived experiences and reflections. These include Orwell’s physical journey in poverty ‘Wigan Pier’, ‘Down & Out in Paris & London’, contrasted with JB’s use of a Daimler for ‘English Journey’ but coming from the background of a mill-working mother in a working-class industrial city. Both men had searing first-hand experiences of war – JB in the Great War, wounded and gassed; Orwell in the Spanish Civil War. The affects of these resonated through their written work on social change, approaches to politics, national and international peace – as well as on their own social, economic and personal development and choices through their life.

Some of the choices and attitudes put the writers in conflict with each other, creating acrimony that was never resolved. This debate will explore areas of these writers’ output that contextualise their influence on literature and thinking through the 20th century and beyond.