Down and Out Today: Notes from the Gutter

'Enlightening and startling... The world needs more writers like Matthew Small.' Charlie Carroll

'Brings into sharp relief the realities of poverty... inspiring and uplifting.' Tracy Shildrick

'A fascinating insight into what it feels like to live on the streets of the UK and India today.' Joanna Mack 

Poverty stretches across all of humanity and by travelling East, Small encounters the raw faces of poverty in India’s slums; he works in a leprosy community, and joins the Sisters of Mercy on the smoggy and exhilarating streets in Calcutta. He then returns to the UK, to Bath, to see what the passing of three months means to those who are scarred by one of the most unglamorous of all humanities’ ills, being poor.

Small engages with different community members who are living with poverty, to answer these long standing questions: What’s keeping them down? What’s pushing them out? And how can we move forward?

Matthew Small is a writer and freelance journalist, currently living and writing amongst the limestone city of Bath in South West England. Matthew has travelled through many parts of the world exploring different cultures and societies across five continents. In 2012 Matthew embarked on a trip to the Holy Land to further his political understanding of the area, which is documented in his debut book The Wall Between Us.