Patrick Hamilton Books In Order

Craven House

Set in a suburban London boarding house in 1911, this is a peculiar love story from the author of ‘The House of Solitude’ and ‘Hangover Square’.

Hangover Square

‘Hamilton…
is a sort of urban Thomas Hardy:…
always a pleasure to read, and as social historian he is unparalleled.’ Nick Hornby

‘A much better writer than Auden, Isherwood…
and his novels are still true now. You can go into any pub today and see it going on.’ Doris Lessing, The Times

Adrift in the grimy pubs of London at the outbreak of World War II, George Bone is hopelessly infatuated with Netta, a contemptuous, small time actress. George suffers from occasional blackouts, during which one thing is horribly clear: he must murder Netta.

Patrick Hamilton enjoyed worldwide popularity during the 1930s. His play Rope was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, and another, Gaslight, was a great success on the stage before being made into a film starring Ingrid Bergman.

The Slaves of Solitude

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 Lockdon, 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 hero*ine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.

Rope

At the heart of any great work of literature is a story. William Shakespeare’s plays are no exception. They tell the stories of kings and queens, of ghosts and witches, of romance and passion. But to get to the stories at the heart of the Bard’s plays, the reader must first work through Shakespeare’s language, a task often too demanding for younger readers and for many adults. This new paperback edition brings ten of Shakespeare’s greatest plays to life. E. Nesbit, the classic British children’s author, shakes off the burdensome complexity of Shakespeare’s language and tells the stories at the core of the plays with a generous sprinkle of wit and humor. Her graceful, vivid retellings, written in highly accessible and lucid prose, are the perfect introduction to Shakespeare’s work. All of these major works are included in this anthology: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, and Twelfth Night. The text is illustrated with dramatic black and white photographs from contemporary productions of the plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival Ontario, Canada, and the Folger Library’s Shakespeare Theater. Also included is an afterword by Peter Hunt, a leading scholar of children’s literature. These retellings of the classic tales of one of the world’s greatest playwrights remind us that it is never too early for Shakespeare.

Angel Street

Audio CD, Fantom Films Limited