According to biographer D. J. Taylor, the young Orwell displayed ‘an enthusiasm for poetry that in [his] formative years seems to have been as least as strong as any desire to write fiction’. Orwell’s poetry is not among his best known – or most highly praised – work, but nonetheless shares similar concerns to (and displays the dry sense of humour present in) his prose. Mere foothills in the range of Orwell’s work perhaps – but building up to the summits later scaled.

Contents:

• Awake! Young men of England
• The Italian soldier shook my hand
• Kitchener
• Romance
• Sometimes in the middle autumn days
• A Dressed Man
• A Little Poem
• The Pagan
• The Lesser Evil
• Ironic Poem about Prostitution
• Summer-like for an instant
• On a Ruined Farm near the His Master’s Voice Gramophone Factory

• Narrator: Peter Coates
• Listening Length: 16 minutes 19 seconds