Patrick Hamilton Books
March 17, 1904 – September 23, 1962
This author captured the vibrant yet often gritty reality of London between and after the world wars. His works, frequently drawing from personal experience, delve into themes of societal divides, moral decay, and a growing disillusionment with modern life, particularly the dehumanizing impact of motorism and capitalism. As his political convictions deepened, his writing became more trenchant and critical of social inequalities. In his later years, his output adopted a bleaker, more cynical tone, mirroring his own disenchantment while retaining a powerful grip on the depiction of human nature.
The classic novel from the author of Rope and Hangover Square.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy
- 528 pages
- 19 hours of reading
A timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars.
Hamilton captures the edgy, obsessive and eventually murderous mindset of a romantically frustrated British man in this WWII-era novel. London 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earls Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation with Netta who is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George. George is adrift in hell, until something goes click in his head and he realizes that he must kill her.
Abacus is reissuing all of Patrick Hamilton's novels, to bring them to a new audience. Craven House is a light-hearted satire on the English boarding house.
Though George Perez’s style is highly recognizable, his contributions to comic art and history have not been fully acknowledged. Patrick Hamilton addresses this neglect, by discussing Perez’s artistic style within the context of Bronze Age superhero art, and by analysing Perez’s work for its representations of race, disability, and gender.
Das Leben von Enid Roach steht Kopf. Der London Blitz treibt sie in die Provinz, wo sie Dinge unternimmt, die sie unter normalen Umständen niemals auch nur in Betracht ziehen würde. Sie verabredet sich in Pubs, hat eine Affäre mit einem amerikanischen Offizier und wohnt in einer Pension, in der die unterschiedlichsten Menschen ein bizarres Dasein fristen. Dominiert wird dieser ganz alltägliche Wahnsinn im Rosamund-Tearoom von Mr. Thwaites, einem Tyrannen mit nervtötenden Affektiertheiten und seiner Verbündeten Vicki Kugelmann, die Miss Roach durch ihre grausamen Intrigen und sadistischen Sticheleien in einen leidenschaftlichen Ausbruch abgrundtiefen Hasses treiben, der sie fast um den Verstand bringt. Der hochkomische Roman Hamiltons über diese kleine Welt, in der sich die große spiegelt, ist eine eindringliche psychologische Studie zwischenmenschlicher Grausamkeit.
