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Episode details

World Service,08 Aug 2011,10 mins

Available for over a year

Alan Johnston presents insight and analysis from BBC correspondents abroad. In this edition, Emma Jane Kirby retraces George Orwell's steps through the world of the 'down and out' in Paris and London, and finds that austerity and poverty are still ruining lives in both cities. A world of pawnshops, final demands, secrets and lies. A world of violence, drugs and confusion. Or a world of secret shame and dogged determination to keep up old standards. As she investigated how life in poverty today might differ from the privations of 80 years ago described in Orwell's book, Emma Jane Kirby found that perhaps the shocking thing was how little had changed.

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