num_pages: 247
description: 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 from the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in Penguin Modern Classics. 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. So he decides to escape to the world of his childhood, to the village he remembers as a rural haven of peace and tranquility. But his return journey to Lower Binfield may bring only a more complete disillusionment.
language: English
title: Coming Up for Air
titlecomplete: Coming Up for Air
characters: Hilda Bowling, George Bowling, Hilda Bowling, Joe Bowling, Porteus, Elsie Waters, Joe Bowling, Porteus, George Bowling, Elsie Waters
genres: Fiction, English Literature, British Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Modern Classics
ratings_count: 17165
places: Charing Cross, London, England, London, England
publisher: Penguin Books Ltd