Download or read book Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia written by Paul Willetts and published by Dewi Lewis Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in London in 1912, the youngest child of a Cuban father and an Anglo-Indian mother, Julian Maclaren-Ross led a bizarre and chaotic life, living at one time or another as a vacuuum-cleaner salesman, an author, screenwriter, army deserter, alcoholic, drug-addict, stalker and Soho stalwart. Since his death, his place in literary history has been secured by the acclaimed posthumous publication of Memoirs of the Forties, and he has been memorialised as X. Trapnel in Anthony Powell's celebrated A Dance to the Music of Time. This is his first full and authorised biography.
Download or read book Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia written by Paul Willetts and published by Thistle Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Diligent, painstaking and bleakly hilarious." The Guardian - Book of the Week "Assiduously researched and enthusiastic... a fascinating trawl through Soho's bohemia." The Independent on Sunday "For a full and really fascinating account [of the life of Julian Maclaren-Ross], it is to Willetts's biography Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia that one must turn. That wonderful book is so informative and so psychologically perceptive..." The Spectator Invariably clad in a sharp suit, augmented by dark glasses and a cigarette-holder, Julian Maclaren-Ross was a celebrated figure in mid-twentieth-century Soho's pub and club scene. He was also one of his generation's most brilliant writers, admired by the likes of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Lucian Freud. Since the publication of Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, there has been a resurgence of interest in his groundbreaking work and flamboyant personality. Synonymous though he is with Soho, his uniquely strange life included spells in the army and on the French Riviera. So chaotic was his existence that he makes Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski appear models of stability and restraint. During fifty-two hectic years, Maclaren-Ross endured alcoholism, drug-induced psychosis, poverty, homelessness, imprisonment, near insanity, and a Scotland Yard manhunt. At one stage he even stalked and planned to murder George Orwell's glamorous widow. Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia provides a vibrant and justly acclaimed portrait of Maclaren-Ross and the louche world he inhabited. Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder "Very striking, very strange and altogether fascinating." Philip French, The Observer "Books of the Year, 2003" "I especially admired [Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia which] breaks new ground and revives [a] remarkable writer in the context of [his] times... Paul Willetts provides a vivid portrait of Julian Maclaren-Ross, the brilliant novelist, short story writer, memoirist, critic, parodist, sponger, dandy and bohemian." John King, The New Statesman, "Books of the Year, 2003" "An inspiring read." D.J. Taylor, The Spectator "Books of the Year, 2003" "Most of the books I enjoyed [this year] were works of non-fiction. They included Paul Willetts's entertaining chronicle of the Forties literary legend J. Maclaren-Ross." Michael Arditti, The Times "Books of the Year, 2003" "Willetts's subtitle 'The bizarre life of writer, actor, Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross' is the perfect precis. His book evokes not just the seedy flamboyance of a man who slept in Turkish baths and railway stations and was immortalised by Anthony Powell as X. Trapnel, but on a long-vanished bohemian world." The Evening Standard, "Books of the Year, 2003" "A less beguiling side of dilettanteism is evoked in Paul Willetts's Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia. This exhaustive biography of Julian Maclaren-Ross is an inventory of flits from boarding houses, unpaid bills, drinking clubs, unfulfilled hopes. It should deter anyone who reads it from becoming a writer." The Guardian "Book of the Week" "Diligent, painstaking and bleakly hilarious." Philip Oakes, The Literary Review "Historical profiling of a high order, richly and racily done." Jonathan Meades "Fear and Loathing In Fitzrovia is the proper stuff. Paul Willetts knows how to depress a depressive. It makes me wish I was an accountant, or anything other than a writer. Towards the end of his life I met the poet and London Magazine editor, Alan Ross, and, in the early hours, asked him the dumb question 'What was Julian Maclaren-Ross really like?' Alan didn't demur: 'Better not to have met him.' I do feel I've met him now." The Independent on Sunday "Assiduously researched and enthusiastic."
Download or read book Julian Maclaren Ross written by Julian Maclaren-Ross and published by Dewi Lewis Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No writer has led as bizarre and eventful a life as the once celebrated Soho dandy Julian Maclaren Ross. In the course of 52 hectic years he endured homelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction and near insanity. The world of Maclaren-Ross's writing tends to be the dingy, down-at-heel world of smoked veiled bars, blacked-out streets and rented lodgings, and first-hand experience lends unmistakable literary logo. He is a truly important writer who can count Evelyn Waugh, Harold Pinter, Graham Greene and John Betjeman among his fans.
Download or read book Characters of Fitzrovia written by Mike Pentelow and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From marvellously illustrated pages leaps a rogues’ gallery of characters past and present who have, over the last 400 years, made this bohemian corner of London what it is.
Download or read book Fear And Loathing In Fitzrovia written by Paul Willetts and published by . This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Invariably clad in a sharp suit, augmented by dark glasses and a cigarette-holder, Julian Maclaren-Ross was a celebrated figure in mid-twentieth century Soho s pub and club scene. He was also one of his generation s most brilliant writers. Synonymous though he is with Soho, his uniquely strange life included spells in the army and on the French Riviera. So chaotic was his existence that he makes Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski appear models of stability and self-restraint. This is a vibrant and justly acclaimed portrait of Maclaren-Ross and his world.
Download or read book Of Love and Hunger written by Julian Maclaren-Ross and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 2002 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This grimly amusing novel of the Depression is based on the author's experiences as a vacuum-cleaner salesman. The narrator, a journalist, returns from India and is forced to take a dead-end job to make ends meet; a happy ending follows his path through scams, affairs and redundancy.
Download or read book A Z of Soho and Fitzrovia written by Johnny Homer and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating tour through Soho and Fitzrovia, neighbouring London districts, highlighting the heritage, people and places from across the centuries.
Download or read book Down and Out in Paris and London written by George Orwell and published by Namaskar Books. This book was released on 101-01-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell: Step into the world of social observation and personal experience with George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." This autobiographical work recounts Orwell's firsthand experiences of poverty and hardship in the two cities. His exploration of the lives of the working class and the struggles of the marginalized provides a poignant and insightful narrative. Why This Book? "Down and Out in Paris and London" offers a gritty and compassionate portrayal of poverty and social inequality, drawing from George Orwell's own experiences. Orwell's keen observations and his exploration of societal disparities make this work a compelling read for those interested in social justice and firsthand accounts of challenging life circumstances.
Download or read book Memoirs of the Forties written by Julian Maclaren-Ross and published by Orbit Books. This book was released on 1991-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these memoirs the author evokes an era of incendiary bombs and rationing and assembles a cast including Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, Nina Hamnett and Woodrow Wyatt. The book also contains six of Maclaren-Ross' wartime stories.
Download or read book The Look of Love written by Paul Willetts and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For almost forty years, Paul Raymond was one Britain's most scandalous celebrities. Best known as the owner of the world famous Raymond Revuebar, he was a successful theatre impresario, property magnate and porn baron. With his pencil moustache, gold jewellery and taste for showgirls, Raymond was both the brash personification of nouveau riche vulgarity and exemplar of the entrepreneurial spirit that enabled a poor boy from Liverpool to become Britain's richest man. 'Like 24 Hour Party People, we want to capture the life of an extraordinary man living in extraordinary times' Steve Coogan
Download or read book Fitzrovia The Other Side of Oxford Street written by Dr Ann Basu and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the other side of the story. Before the Second World War, Ann Basu's family of Jewish tailors lived where the BT Tower stands today. At that time of high migration, the women's fashion trade and the new car industry were sweeping into Fitzrovia, Russian and German anarchists argued in its clubs, Indian revolutionaries practised at the shooting range, and popular cafes such as Lyons' transformed the social lives of workers. The Jews of Fitzrovia and Soho saw each other as being on the 'other side' of Oxford Street, and this book reflects Fitzrovia's distinctive 'inbetween-ness' – at the inner edge of central London, but separate from the West End. Putting the spotlight on Fitzrovia's enterprising twentieth-century immigrant workers, this is the history of working-class and outsider voices that have previously been muted.
Download or read book King Con written by Paul Willetts and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spellbinding tale of hustler Edgar Laplante—the king of Jazz Age con artists—who becomes the victim of his own dangerous game. Edgar Laplante was a smalltime grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader—and total fraud. Under the pretenses of raising money for struggling Native American reservations, Laplante dressed in buckskins and a feathered headdress and traveled throughout the American West, narrowly escaping exposure and arrest each time he left town. When the heat became too much, he embarked upon a lucrative continent-hopping tour that attracted even more enormous crowds, his cons growing in proportion to the adulation of his audience. As he moved through Europe, he spied his biggest mark on the Riviera: a prodigiously rich Hungarian countess, who was instantly smitten with the con man. The countess bankrolled a lavish trip through Italy that made Laplante a darling of the Mussolini regime and a worldwide celebrity, soaring to unimaginable heights on the wings of his lies. But then, at the pinnacle of his improbable success, Laplante’s overreaching threatened to destroy him… In King Con, Paul Willetts brings this previously untold story to life in all its surprising absurdity, showing us how our tremendous capacity for belief and our longstanding obsession with celebrity can make fools of us all—and proving that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Download or read book Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms written by Paul Willetts and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms provides the first comprehensive account of what was once hailed by a leading American newspaper as the greatest spy story of World War II. This dramatic yet little-known saga, replete with telephone taps, kidnappings, and police surveillance, centres on the furtive escapades of Tyler Kent, a handsome, womanising 28-year-old Ivy League graduate, who doubles as a US Embassy code clerk and Soviet agent. Against the backdrop of London high society during the so-called Phoney War, Kent's life intersects with the lives of the book's two other memorably flamboyant protagonists. One of those is Maxwell Knight, an urbane, endearingly eccentric MI5 spyhunter. The other is Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian fashion designer and Nazi spy whose outfits are worn by the Duchess of Windsor and whose parents are friends of the British royal family. Wolkoff belongs to a fascist secret society called the Right Club, which aims to overthrow the British government. Her romantic entanglement with Tyler Kent gives her access to a secret correspondence between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, a correspondence that has the potential to transform the outcome of the war.
Download or read book North Soho 999 written by Paul Willetts and published by Dewi Lewis Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A surprisingly topical non-fiction account of the murder that came to symbolise the crimewave threatening to overwhelm post-war London. It is the untold story of a Soho robbery and shooting carried out by a 17 year old and his two young accomplices. Much of the worldwide press reaction at the time focussed on the breakdown of law and order, rising youth crime, the spread of illegal firearms and the deterrent value of capital punishment - concerns that are frequently echoed today.
Download or read book Collected Memoirs written by Julian Maclaren-Ross and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julian Maclaren-Ross was one of the most colourful inhabitants and chroniclers of the Soho and Fitzrovia of the forties, fifties and sixties. He knew and wrote about its most memorable characters including Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, Tambimuttu, Nina Hamnett and Woodrow Wyatt. He was something of a dandy and a gifted raconteur, and his life, often chaotic, and related unsentimentally by him in these memoirs, veered between the fringes of the literary establishment and occasional homelessness.
Download or read book GYPSY JOE written by Joe Smith and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2012-10-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gypsy Joe is not only a story of redemption, but an uplifting account of a young gypsy determined to realize his dream. Joe Smith tells of his formative years travelling the country in a caravan and how he encountered crushing prejudice when his extraordinary talents as a golf boy prodigy became apparent.Disillusioned, he recounts a downward spiral and a life of criminality before pulling back from the brink and making the most of his life.The Observer selected the book as their Sports Book of the Year 2009 saying: "e;One of the best golf books written this year; although the cheque books come out for the scandal, this true story of thwarted ambition, criminality, violence and redemption has substance. A courageous story shot through with intelligence and humanity."e;"e;What comes across in this book is family loyalty, raw courage and violence but there is also intelligence and humanity."e;Chris Blackhurst -- Evening Standard, 23 June 2009
Download or read book Bohemian London written by Travis Elborough and published by Oldacastle Books. This book was released on 2017-11-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 150 years, the garrets and pubs of Soho, the salons of Chelsea, the opium dens of Limehouse, and the brothels of Covent Garden teemed with poets, painters, derelicts, drunks, sensualists, homosexuals, crooks, and cranks. In Bohemian London, Travis Elborough chronicles de Qunincey and Coleridge’s hazy laudanum days in Tyburnia; toasts Wilde at the Café Royal; imbibes absinthe with Yeats at the Cheshire Cheese; snorts cocaine with Aleister Crowley; sips bitter with Dylan Thomas; and catches last orders with Francis Bacon. While true Bohemians may be long gone, their style, mores, addictions, and excesses did much to shape the city we know today.
