One of those in control was Winston Churchill. After 20 years away from the Tories, he was now back in the fold as Chancellor of the Exchequer, busy crushing the General Strike.

Southwold was not exactly a hotbed of socialism, which only made Eric all the more determined to expiate the sins of empire.

In a world where pretty much everyone knew and kept their place, he couldn't wait to lose his.

Most people who are restless with their lot in life wanted to rise above their station. Eric was impatient to sink all the way to the bottom.

There was something almost franciscan about his nosedive into squalor.

It wasn't just a renunciation of middle-class respectability, it was the calculated bodily embrace of everything that repelled the fastidious Eric -- muck, indescribably evil smells.

When he sold his clothes and bought a tramp's kit, he was making a point, at least to himself, that his life as a writer would start by plumbing the depths.

It was like St Catherine of Siena drinking a bowl of pus to show that nothing human was beneath her.

For two years, Blair did the Cook's tour of destitution, comprehensive, unrelenting, gruesomely anti-scenic.

In the bathroom of one especially horrible doss house, or "Spike", he finally got down to basic truths.