While in Bath, he spends a lot of time investigating the various charities and food banks that abound in a city more known for tourism, Jane Austen and the baths than for poverty. Like Orwell in Paris, Matthew Small spends his time in Bath working, living fairly simply (in a borrowed caravan), with low funds. “Down and Out in Paris and London,” was published in 1933 and I recall, when I last re-read it, thinking that many of the points Orwell made were still valid today and this book suggests I was correct in this assumption. Part of the book takes part in Bath and then he travels to India and Nepal. What does it mean to be poor? As you can see from the title, this book was partly inspired by George Orwell’s, ”Down and Out in Paris and London,” and, in the same way, the author focuses on two different places. In a time when our television screens are filled with programmes about people on benefits, author Matthew Small has taken a very topical subject to focus on. ‘A fascinating insight into what it feels like to live on the streets of the UK and India today.’ –Joanna Mack ‘Enlightening and startling…The world needs more writers like Matthew Small.’

‘Brings into sharp relief the realities of poverty…inspiring and uplifting.’ –Tracy Shildrick Small engages with different community members who are living with poverty, to answer these long standing questions: What’s keeping them down? What’s pushing them out? And how can we move forward?

He then returns to the UK to see what the passing of three months means to those who are scarred by one of the most unglamorous of all humanities’ ills, being poor. Poverty stretches across all of humanity and by traveling East, Small encounters the raw faces of poverty in India’s slums he works in a leprosy community, and joins the Sisters of Mercy on the smoggy and exhilarating streets in Calcutta. What does poverty mean today? Writer Matthew Small seeks to answer this question and witness the similarities and differences between poverty in the UK and India. The book explores poverty across contemporary society and cultures specifically looking at UK poverty (in Bath) in comparison to India. Topical book exploring the meaning of poverty today questioning whether poverty is specific only to money.

Down and Out Today by Matthew Small