("In Craven House," among the shifting, uncertain world of...)
"In Craven House," among the shifting, uncertain world of the English boarding house, with its sad population of the shabby-genteel on the way down - and the eternal optimists who would never get up or on - the young Patrick Hamilton, with loving, horrified fascination, first mapped out the territory that he would make, uniquely, his own. Although many of Hamilton's lifelong interests are here, they are handled with youthful brio and optimism conspicuously absent from his later work. The inmates of Craven House have their foibles, but most are indulgently treated by an author whose world view has yet to harden from skepticism into cynicism. The generational conflicts of Hamilton's own youth thread throughout the narrative, with hair bobbing and dancing as the battle lines. That perennial of the 1920s bourgeoisie, the 'servant problem', is never far from the surface, and tensions crescendo gradually to a resolution one climactic dinnertime.
("The Midnight Bell," tells the story of Bob, a sailor tur...)
"The Midnight Bell," tells the story of Bob, a sailor turned bar waiter who falls in love with Jenny, a prostitute who visits the pub. Ella, the barmaid at the pub, is secretly in love with Bob.
(Genre: Drama Characters: 6 males, 2 females Scenery: Inte...)
Genre: Drama Characters: 6 males, 2 females Scenery: Interior For the mere sake of adventure, danger, and the "fun of the thing," Wyndham Brandon persuades his weak-minded friend, Charles Granillo, to assist him in the murder of a fellow undergraduate, a perfectly harmless man named Ronald Raglan. They place the body in a wooden chest, and to add spice to their handiwork, invite a few acquaintances, including the dead youth's father, to a party, the chest with its gruesome contents serving as a supper table. The horror and tension are worked up gradually; thunder grows outside, the guests leave, and we see the reactions of the two murderers, watched closely by the suspecting lame poet, Rupert Cadell. Finally, they break down under the strain and confess their guilt.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy
(Patrick Hamilton may be best known now for the plays Rope...)
Patrick Hamilton may be best known now for the plays Rope and Gaslight and for the classic Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor movies they inspired, but in his heyday, he was no less famous for his brooding tales of London life. Featuring a Dickensian cast of pub crawlers, prostitutes, lowlifes, and just plain losers who are looking for love - or just an ear to bend - Hamilton’s novels are a triumph of deft characterization, offbeat humor, unlikely compassion, and raw suspense. In recent years, Hamilton has undergone a remarkable revival, with his champions including Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Nick Hornby, and Sarah Waters. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a tale of obsession and betrayal that centers on a seedy pub in a run-down part of London. Bob the waiter skimps and saves and fantasizes about writing a novel until he falls for the pretty prostitute Jenny and blows it all. Kindly Ella, Bob’s co-worker, adores Bob, but is condemned to enjoy nothing more than the attentions of the insufferable Mr. Eccles; Jenny, out on the street, is out of love, hope, and money.
(A stunning anomaly within the literary oeuvre of Patrick ...)
A stunning anomaly within the literary oeuvre of Patrick Hamilton, "Impromptu in Moribundia" (first published in 1939) is the most explicit production of his interest in a Marxist analysis of society. It is a satirical fable about one (nameless) man's trespass (through a fantastical machine called the 'Asteradio') into a parallel universe on a far-off planet where the 'miserably dull affairs of England' are mirrored and transformed into an apparent idyll of the bourgeois English imagination.
(Hamilton captures the edgy, obsessive, and eventually mur...)
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.
(England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems f...)
England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the terrors and rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach has retreated to the relative safety and stupefying boredom of the suburban town of Thames Lockdown, where she rents a room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Payne. There the savvy, sensible, decent, but all-too-meek Miss Roach endures the dinner-table interrogations of Mr. Thwaites and seeks to relieve her solitude by going out drinking and necking with a wayward American lieutenant. Life is almost bearable until Vicki Kugelmann, a seeming friend, moves into the adjacent room. That’s when Miss Roach’s troubles really begin. Recounting an epic battle of wills in the claustrophobic confines of the boarding house, Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, with a delightfully improbable heroine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.
("Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse" is a 1953 novel by Patrick H...)
"Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse" is a 1953 novel by Patrick Hamilton, the second in the Gorse Trilogy. The United Kingdom TV drama The Charmer from 1987, is somewhat loosely based on this novel, though the number of changes was sufficient for the dramatist, Allan Prior, to issue a novelization of the TV series.
(In Ernest Ralph Gorse, Patrick Hamilton creates one of fi...)
In Ernest Ralph Gorse, Patrick Hamilton creates one of fiction’s most captivating anti-heroes, whose heartlessness and lack of scruple are matched only by the inventiveness and panache with which he swindles his victims. With great deftness and precision Hamilton exposes how his dupes’ own naivete, snobbery or greed make them perfect targets. These three novels are shot through with the brooding menace and sense of bleak inevitability so characteristic of the author. There is also vivid satire and caustic humor.
Patrick Hamilton was an English actor, novelist, playwright, and author. He published his first novel, "Craven House," in 1926 and within a few years had established a wide readership for himself. Despite personal setbacks and an increasing problem with drink, he was able to write some of his best work.
Background
Patrick Hamilton, born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton, was born March 17, 1904, in Hassocks, Sussex, England to Bernard Hamilton and Ellen Adele Hockley. Though his father had inherited considerable money, by the time Patrick was born most of the fortune had been squandered. Due to his father's alcoholism and financial ineptitude, the family spent much of Hamilton's childhood living in boarding houses in Chiswick and Hove.
Education
Patrick's education consisted of only two terms at Westminster School, during the 1918-1919 academic year. During this time his poem 'Heaven,' appeared in the journal Poetry' Review. While at Westminster, Hamilton decided, against his parents' wishes, that he wanted to be a writer.
In 1921 Patrick Hamilton began acting, another of his interests. His sister, Lalla, worked for actor and playwright Sutton Vane, performed in Vane's plays, and was romantically involved with him. Through her association with Vane, she got Hamilton an acting role in two separate tours of Vane's play "Outward Bound" and as well as a job as assistant stage manager, experiences that would help Hamilton with his own playwriting. These experiences surfaced in his first three novels: "Monday Morning," "Craven House," and "Twopence Colored."
Hamilton wrote "Monday Morning" while living in West Kensington. He wrote the novel full time after getting financial backing from Vane and Lalla, a result of the success of "Outward Bound," and his mother's promise to pay his rent for one year.
Hamilton's third novel, "Twopence Colored," has a more serious tone and focuses entirely on theater. Perhaps based on Hamilton's sister's relationship with Vane. The reception of the book was more lukewarm than Hamilton's first two novels.
The year 1929 was momentous for Hamilton. He published "The Midnight Bell: A Love Story," the first novel in the trilogy "Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky," and Hamilton's first break from the theater-theme prevalent in his first three novels.
In 1927 Hamilton fell in love with Lily Connolly, a prostitute, which love affair influenced the plot of "Midnight Bell."
Also in 1929, Hamilton enhanced his literary reputation with his play "Rope," which opened at New York City's Ambassadors Theatre and ran for six months. He later worked on the screenplay adaptation with Hitchcock.
Hamilton was having trouble working and Lois, his wife, suggested they move to the country and she forbade him alcohol until he completed "The Siege of Pleasure," which, though written after "Midnight Bell."
After an automobile struck him in 1932, Hamilton wrote nothing for two years.
During this time he became interested in and studied Marxism, leading to the publication of "Impromptu in Moribundia," a Marxist dystopia. While he was writing "Moribundia," he also wrote "Money with Menaces," his first radio play, which became a success in 1937. He also published another radio play that year, "To the Public Danger," which addresses the problem of drunk drivers. During this period, Hamilton was also the drama critic for Time and Tide.
When Hamilton's mother committed suicide in 1934, he returned to Norfolk and concentrated on finishing the last novel in the trilogy, "The Plains of Cement." In 1935, the one-volume edition of the trilogy was published.
In December 1938, "Gas Light: A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts" opened and became an immediate success. "Gaslight," considered Hamilton's best play. The play moved to London's West End in 1939 and then to New York in 1941, where it ran on Broadway for four years as "Angel Street." Despite his professional success, Hamilton's alcoholism worsened during this period.
"Hangover Septate" considered Hamilton's best novel. While Hamilton enjoyed huge success with "Hangover Square," he turned to write "The Duke of Darkness," which was published in 1943, the same year a revised edition of "Craven House" was published.
Deemed unfit to serve in the military, Hamilton spent the war years in London. "The Slaves of Solitude," which many critics saw as a rival to "Hangover Square," chronicles the lives of characters on the home front, inactive during the war. Hamilton, his alcoholism now full-blown, took four years to finish the novel. By the time "Slaves" was published. Hamilton's doctors had warned him several times to reduce his alcohol intake; he was drinking three bottles of Scotch a day by the end of the war.
In 1949 Hamilton, hoping a relocation would refresh him, bought a house on the Isle of Wight that he sold at a loss just a few months after its purchase. During this time he also began an affair with Lady Ursula Chetwynd-Talbot, also a writer. After he sold the Wight house, he rented a house in Hove where he lived with Ursula, spending weekends with Lois. The love triangle lasted to some extent for the rest of Hamilton's life.
Soon after Hamilton met Chetwynd-Talbot he began writing the "Gorse" novels. Planned as a series, the novels are set in Brighton and follow the criminal career of Ralph Ernest Gorse. Almost immediately after finishing "West Pier," Hamilton began work on "Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse." He published the third and last "Gorse" book and "Unknown Assailant," one year later.
While writing the "Gorse" series Hamilton became severely depressed and his alcoholism got even worse. He was hospitalized several times and his writing career soon came to a halt.
That Hamilton followed Stalinist thought is generally acknowledged, although he seems to have been a supporter from the point of view of a writer. He saw his duty to the party as supporting the need for "ideological refashioning." Perhaps the most notable comment came in 1939, when, asked about the effect of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, he replied that "Hitler's power is on the decline […] the arrangement he made with Russia was a terrible symptom of weakness from which there is no sort of recovery in the long run." Although never a Communist Party member, Hamilton stood behind the Party line.
Personality
Patrick suffered a disfiguring injury when hit by a car, and he had a rapidly escalating alcohol problem. J. B Priestley saw him as 'an unhappy man who needed whiskey as a car needs petrol.'
Connections
In 1930 Hamilton married Lois Martin. During his marriage, Patrick began an affair with Lady Ursula Chetwynd-Talbot, also a writer. After he sold the Wight house, he rented a house in Hove where he lived with Ursula, spending weekends with Lois. The love triangle lasted to some extent for the rest of Hamilton's life. In 1953 he divorced Lois and married Chetwynd-Talbot.