Generation F

Winston Smith is young, idealistic and desperate to make a difference.

As a youth worker in Britain's care homes and supported housing projects, he's well-placed to do so... he's dealing with some of the country's most damaged, deprived and difficult youngsters.

Given his own background (he suffered from drug addiction and near-alcoholism in his teenage years and early 20s) and his liberal disposition (he's a Guardian-reading vegetarian socialist with a first-class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Sociology and a Masters in International Relations) it ought to be a match made in heave.

But then reality intrudes.


Generation F is the first book to reveal the unvarnished truth about life in Britain's care homes and supported housing projects.

Winston Smith spends his working day wrestling with the problems of damaged youngsters, violent thugs and teenage criminals. He is confronted at every turn by irresponsible parents, incompetent police officers and pointless, expensive bureaucracy.

His writing is controversial, angry and edgy - and it made him the runaway winner of the 2010 Orwell Prize.


'A shocking and often funny account of life in the madhouse.'

The Sunday Times 


‘A devastating book exposing the truth about the anarchy in this country’s care homes’

The Daily Mail


'We could have agonised for hours and then passed Winston Smith over as too difficult, too dark, too much of a risk but we were charged with judging the best. Winston Smith’s blog was the clear and unanimous choice of the judging panel. 

There is a directness and clarity to his philippics that left them in our thoughts long after we had finished reading, but that was not enough. What carried the day with us was his passion and conviction that we should know what wrongs had been done in our names in some of those places where most of us choose not to look.

Orwell Prize Judges