A familiar figure in Soho's pubs and nightclubs, Julian Maclaren-Ross, with his carnation and silver-topped cane, his fur coat and dark glasses, was a natural bohemian. By the early 1940s he was a celebrated author and was well equipped to provide an anecdotal history of the place that, between the bombs, offered writers and artists a home away from home. 
Evoking a demolished era of incendiary bombs and rationing, Maclaren-Ross misses none of it and introduces us to the budding luminaries of the age, among them Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. 
"An entertaining portrait of a wartime London seldom shown, together with six of the author's best stories." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

Memoirs of the Forties

Biographies & Memoirs

MacLaren-Ross, Julian

Memoirs

Puffin

The key literary figure in the pubs of post-war Fitzrovia, Maclaren-Ross pulled together his dispersed energies to write two great books: the posthumously published Memoirs of the Forties and this spectacular novel of the Depression, Of Love and Hunger - harsh, vivid, louche and slangy it deserves a permanent place alongside Coming Up for Air and Hangover Square.

Of Love and Hunger

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

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.

ABACUS +

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.

Julian Maclaren-ross collected memoirs

Black Spring Press

November 2004 is the 40th anniversary of Maclaren-Ross's premature death, hastened by drug and alcohol abuse. A significant number of features and articles are planned in the national press throughout November. Maclaren-Ross's wild, bohemian life makes him a counterpart to hard-living American writers such as Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. Endorsed by leading 20th century literary figures such as Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Betjeman, who all rated his work very highly. Important writer whose high-profile fans include Harold Pinter, Melvyn Bragg, Virginia Ironside, Jonathan Meades, Iain Sinclair, D.J. Taylor, Michael Holroyd. Revival of interest, triggered by publication of his well-received biography in 2003. Massive interest in bohemian Soho, illustrated by the plethora of recent books, exhibitions, plays and films. No writer led as bizarre and eventful a life as the once celebrated Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64). 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 smoke-veiled bars, rented lodgings, blacked-out streets, and wartime army garrisons, first-hand experience lending his work a frisson of authenticity. Whether they're narrated in the breathless, slangy voice of an uneducated soldier, or the clipped cadences of a colonial 'expat', whether they're set on the French Riviera or wartime England, they're imprinted with Maclaren-Ross's unmistakable literary logo. The prevailing tone is casual, matter-of-fact, and laconic, with his characteristically mordant, humorous asides failing to conceal the melancholy that seeps through their hardboiled surfaces.

Selected Letters

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Books by MacLaren-Ross, Julian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MacLaren-Ross, Julian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Memoirs of the Forties

Of Love and Hunger

Memoirs of the Forties

Julian Maclaren-ross collected memoirs

Selected Letters