Coming Up for Air

Coming Up for Air is the seventh book by English writer George Orwell published in June 1939 by Victor Gollancz. It was written between 1938 and 1939 while Orwell spent time recuperating from illness in French Morocco mainly in Marrakesh. George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon. George Bowling forty-five mortgaged married with children is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary life. He fears modern times - since in 1939 the Second World War is imminent - foreseeing food queues soldiers secret police and tyranny.