The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell

Trained at Eton to be a snob but disgusted by the oppressive methods he had applies in the Burma Police, George Orwell set out as deliberately as William Cobbett to make contact with the working class in England.  These 'Urban Rides' of his, whether to Wigan or Sheffield, supply us with a series of factual, shocking, but sublimely human reports on the state of the nation in a time of mass unemployment.  Orwell's vivid style and his mistrust of the political cant of the intelligentsia of all hues makes his essays on the miner's life, on slums, on unemployment and malnutrition, as readable today as they ever were.