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Memoirs of the Forties
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)
368 pages, Paperback
Published January 8, 1985
About the author
Julian Maclaren-Ross
20 books41 followersThe English writer and dandy, Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64), is synonymous with the bohemian world of mid-twentieth-century Soho. There he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Dylan Thomas, Quentin Crisp, John Minton, Nina Hamnett, Joan Wyndham, Aleister Crowley, John Deakin, Augustus John, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. His theatrical dress sense — a sharp suit combined with his famous teddy-bear coat, aviator-style dark glasses and cigarette-holder — ensured that he stood out even in such flamboyant company. Intrigued by his stylish get-up and dissolute way of life, numerous writers, most notably Anthony Powell and Olivia Manning, used him as a model for characters in their fiction.
During the 1940s Maclaren-Ross was usually to be found in the Saloon Bar of the Wheatsheaf Pub on Rathbone Place, From the late 1930s until the late 1950s, this took over from the nearby Fitzroy Tavern as the most fashionable of the many watering-holes in North Soho, an area that has since become known as ‘Fitzrovia’.
Besides being one of Soho’s most famous denizens, Maclaren-Ross was the writer most responsible for defining its sleazy allure. He did so through a string of witty and influential short stories as well as his classic Memoirs of the Forties which also features memorable portraits of Graham Greene and Dylan Thomas.
But Maclaren-Ross is far more than just another sharp-eyed, literary bar-fly. During his lifetime he produced a substantial, astonishingly diverse body of writing which broke new ground in many genres. As an occasional film essayist, his writing about Alfred Hitchcock and film noir was well ahead of its time. As a short story writer and novelist, he introduced a new, vernacular, Americanised style to English fiction. As a writer of reportage, he anticipated Hunter S. Thomspon, Tom Wolfe and the other American ‘New Journalists’ of the 1960s. As a literary critic, he wrote with rare acuity about the writers as varied as Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, John Buchan, Frank Harris, Jean Cocteau, M.P. Sheil, Dashiell Hammett and Henry Green. As a memoirist, he was a forerunner of so many current writers who work in a similarly delicate, novelistic vein. As a literary parodist, he was praised by William Faulkner and P.G. Wodehouse. As a translator, he was very sensitive to stylistic nuances. And as a dramatist, he was hailed as ‘radio’s Alfred Hitchcock.’
His work was admired by writers Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell, Olivia Manning, John Lehmann, Lucian Freud and others. Since his premature death at the age of only fifty-two, he has become a cult favourite among fellow writers such as Harold Pinter, Michael Holroyd, John King, Iain Sinclair, Jonathan Meades, Chris Petit, D.J. Taylor and Virginia Ironside. His reputation has also been kept alive through the campaigning of groups such as the Lost Club and the Sohemian Society.
In the wake of the publication in 2003 of Paul Willetts’s Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, the first biography of Maclaren-Ross, there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in both his life and work. The critical and commercial success of the biography triggered a major republication programme which has brought his touching, influential and often witty work to the attention of a wider public. Critics have been unanimous in their praise, hailing him as a major twentieth-century writer.
During the 1940s Maclaren-Ross was usually to be found in the Saloon Bar of the Wheatsheaf Pub on Rathbone Place, From the late 1930s until the late 1950s, this took over from the nearby Fitzroy Tavern as the most fashionable of the many watering-holes in North Soho, an area that has since become known as ‘Fitzrovia’.
Besides being one of Soho’s most famous denizens, Maclaren-Ross was the writer most responsible for defining its sleazy allure. He did so through a string of witty and influential short stories as well as his classic Memoirs of the Forties which also features memorable portraits of Graham Greene and Dylan Thomas.
But Maclaren-Ross is far more than just another sharp-eyed, literary bar-fly. During his lifetime he produced a substantial, astonishingly diverse body of writing which broke new ground in many genres. As an occasional film essayist, his writing about Alfred Hitchcock and film noir was well ahead of its time. As a short story writer and novelist, he introduced a new, vernacular, Americanised style to English fiction. As a writer of reportage, he anticipated Hunter S. Thomspon, Tom Wolfe and the other American ‘New Journalists’ of the 1960s. As a literary critic, he wrote with rare acuity about the writers as varied as Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, John Buchan, Frank Harris, Jean Cocteau, M.P. Sheil, Dashiell Hammett and Henry Green. As a memoirist, he was a forerunner of so many current writers who work in a similarly delicate, novelistic vein. As a literary parodist, he was praised by William Faulkner and P.G. Wodehouse. As a translator, he was very sensitive to stylistic nuances. And as a dramatist, he was hailed as ‘radio’s Alfred Hitchcock.’
His work was admired by writers Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell, Olivia Manning, John Lehmann, Lucian Freud and others. Since his premature death at the age of only fifty-two, he has become a cult favourite among fellow writers such as Harold Pinter, Michael Holroyd, John King, Iain Sinclair, Jonathan Meades, Chris Petit, D.J. Taylor and Virginia Ironside. His reputation has also been kept alive through the campaigning of groups such as the Lost Club and the Sohemian Society.
In the wake of the publication in 2003 of Paul Willetts’s Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, the first biography of Maclaren-Ross, there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in both his life and work. The critical and commercial success of the biography triggered a major republication programme which has brought his touching, influential and often witty work to the attention of a wider public. Critics have been unanimous in their praise, hailing him as a major twentieth-century writer.
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February 21, 2025In the '50s, there were the angry young men, writing about working class life, but before that there were the rather aggrieved lower middle class young men, living in dingy boarding houses, cadging drinks in Soho pubs, smoking off-brand cigarettes, and trying to seduce women who twist their wedding rings on their fingers, whilst scratching a living on the edges of the literary world. Patrick Hamilton, the early works of Graham Greene, Julian Maclaren Ross. Having read his Bognor-set masterpiece of vacuum cleaner salesman, Of Love and Hunger, and his surreal novella, Bitten By The Tarantula, as well as his war time stories, his (unfinished) memoir seemed like the next logical step, although logic is not something you’d associate with JMR.
He seemed to have an awful lot of bad luck: manuscripts go missing, banks refuse to cash cheques, printers refuse to print the swear words in his stories, his adaptation of A Gun For Sale is accepted but not put into production because Germany invades Poland, his literary career (such as it was) is curtailed by being conscripted, his literary agent is killed, the film studio he's working for goes bust, he comes down with pneumonia after being offered a top secret mission in Africa, but at other times, he creates his own bad luck: writing to a Times journalist to complain that the BBC aren’t paying him 50 guineas for his radio play, and his contretemps with various people at the BBC unfortunately brought to mind Alan Partridge and Tony Hall’s argument about a second series (some of it is very #AccidentalPartridge: JMR comments that Cyril Connolly did not buy him lunch at the Cafe Royal but he ate a Welsh Rarebit on the train back to Bognor Regis). I suppose his worst bad luck was being more famous now than then.
But he is very funny, easily viewing the absurdities in life, whether that be in the army or the literary world. His meeting with the publisher Jonathan Cape, in which JC himself tells him that they have no problem with bad language but there are "Two words I will have to draw the line at: Fuck and Cunt."
"Shit?" I said hopefully.
Or when he accidentally starts agreeing with fascism because he can't hear what someone is saying in a loud pub.
Or the episode when an over enthusiastic lieutenant tells a new recruit to hit him on his new tin hat with a rifle to demonstrate the hat’s durability; the new recruit accidentally knocks him out and then is too scared to use a rifle for the rest of the war.
The London literary world has changed a lot since 1938 (for one thing, women other than Stevie Smith are allowed into it now) so be prepared to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia looking up who JMR is referencing: obviously I’d heard of Cyril “pram in the hall” Connolly, but only vaguely recollected Norman Collins who wrote London Belongs To Me (later made into a film starring Richard “Dicky” Attenborough) and Henry Green, G.S. Marlowe, Arthur Calder-Marshall, W.S Graham, Cyril Karel Jaeger, were all new to me.
JMR writes that he was ignorant of how the literary scene worked, but this seems to work in his favour: when he wants to adapt a Graham Greene novel, he just writes to him about it and is invited to lunch - in a memorable passage he and Greene walk across Clapham Common in the midday sun to buy jugs of beer from the Windmill pub. His frustration, and bad behaviour acting on said frustration, is understandable when you consider that literary London was run by smooth, mannered, connected and confident Oxbridge men, amongst whom he didn’t really belong; but neither did he really grub down with the working man (or woman, although I think he would have liked to) and to his credit he despised the bully boys of the BUF and was very much a non-proselytising socialist. There are also beautifully observed moments of social history: whilst looking for the Horizon offices in Bloomsbury, JMR finds himself in a block of flats populated by Asian poeple (presumably students at UCL or SOAS), none of whom want to speak to him, closing the door in his face. He later finds out that the authorities are rounding up “Asiatics” as there has been sedition in the then colony of India. The war was not, contrary to Brexit opinion, our finest hour.
He seemed to have an awful lot of bad luck: manuscripts go missing, banks refuse to cash cheques, printers refuse to print the swear words in his stories, his adaptation of A Gun For Sale is accepted but not put into production because Germany invades Poland, his literary career (such as it was) is curtailed by being conscripted, his literary agent is killed, the film studio he's working for goes bust, he comes down with pneumonia after being offered a top secret mission in Africa, but at other times, he creates his own bad luck: writing to a Times journalist to complain that the BBC aren’t paying him 50 guineas for his radio play, and his contretemps with various people at the BBC unfortunately brought to mind Alan Partridge and Tony Hall’s argument about a second series (some of it is very #AccidentalPartridge: JMR comments that Cyril Connolly did not buy him lunch at the Cafe Royal but he ate a Welsh Rarebit on the train back to Bognor Regis). I suppose his worst bad luck was being more famous now than then.
But he is very funny, easily viewing the absurdities in life, whether that be in the army or the literary world. His meeting with the publisher Jonathan Cape, in which JC himself tells him that they have no problem with bad language but there are "Two words I will have to draw the line at: Fuck and Cunt."
"Shit?" I said hopefully.
Or when he accidentally starts agreeing with fascism because he can't hear what someone is saying in a loud pub.
Or the episode when an over enthusiastic lieutenant tells a new recruit to hit him on his new tin hat with a rifle to demonstrate the hat’s durability; the new recruit accidentally knocks him out and then is too scared to use a rifle for the rest of the war.
The London literary world has changed a lot since 1938 (for one thing, women other than Stevie Smith are allowed into it now) so be prepared to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia looking up who JMR is referencing: obviously I’d heard of Cyril “pram in the hall” Connolly, but only vaguely recollected Norman Collins who wrote London Belongs To Me (later made into a film starring Richard “Dicky” Attenborough) and Henry Green, G.S. Marlowe, Arthur Calder-Marshall, W.S Graham, Cyril Karel Jaeger, were all new to me.
JMR writes that he was ignorant of how the literary scene worked, but this seems to work in his favour: when he wants to adapt a Graham Greene novel, he just writes to him about it and is invited to lunch - in a memorable passage he and Greene walk across Clapham Common in the midday sun to buy jugs of beer from the Windmill pub. His frustration, and bad behaviour acting on said frustration, is understandable when you consider that literary London was run by smooth, mannered, connected and confident Oxbridge men, amongst whom he didn’t really belong; but neither did he really grub down with the working man (or woman, although I think he would have liked to) and to his credit he despised the bully boys of the BUF and was very much a non-proselytising socialist. There are also beautifully observed moments of social history: whilst looking for the Horizon offices in Bloomsbury, JMR finds himself in a block of flats populated by Asian poeple (presumably students at UCL or SOAS), none of whom want to speak to him, closing the door in his face. He later finds out that the authorities are rounding up “Asiatics” as there has been sedition in the then colony of India. The war was not, contrary to Brexit opinion, our finest hour.
September 16, 2015
Extraordinario. Demuestra que no es necesario conocer a alguien para leer sus memorias. Cada uno de los episodios que forman parte de este volumen son claros y perfectos. Los primeros tratan de su infancia, transcurrida en el sur de Inglaterra y en Francia, y los demás son episodios de su juventud en Londres mayormente antes y durante la II Guerra Mundial. Los momentos más dramáticos no estan narrados directamente sino solamente aludidos -la muerte de su hermano a muy corta edad, y en realidad ninguna muerte, la huida a Canadá de su hermana- y los episodios breves que cuenta son los espejos donde todo lo demás se refeja de una manera más reservada. Parece una gran elección por su parte.
Los relatos de juventud son, además de bien escritos, muy divertidos. MacLaren-Ross compartió trabajo con Dylan Thomas y cuenta su visita a dos escritores célebres (uno olvidado, el otro Graham Greene) y su vida en la bohemia que Londres mantenía aun durante la guerra. El último de los relatos, un resumen de su amistad con un actor y escritor de poco éxito, es el más cómico y casi sin dudas el mejor del libro.
Los relatos de juventud son, además de bien escritos, muy divertidos. MacLaren-Ross compartió trabajo con Dylan Thomas y cuenta su visita a dos escritores célebres (uno olvidado, el otro Graham Greene) y su vida en la bohemia que Londres mantenía aun durante la guerra. El último de los relatos, un resumen de su amistad con un actor y escritor de poco éxito, es el más cómico y casi sin dudas el mejor del libro.
September 25, 2009
A great book - funny, illuminating, an entirely original voice. Maclaren Ross spent too long in the wilderness, before his death and since - it's time he was thoroughly revived because writing this sharp is too good to lose.
October 30, 2010
Maclaren-Ross is a lost gem of a writer. He was writing fictional memoir long before the Americans got onto it and he takes you into the world of literary Soho in the 40s that's makes it feel as if you could have been there. Highly recommended.
November 1, 2016
My first introduction to the writing of Maclaren-Ross and I shall definitely be back for more (in fact, 'Of Love and Hunger' is next in line on my bookshelf). Although this is a 'grab bag' of JMR's 1940s writing it never feels like a 'rag bag'. I thought the short stories were of variable quality but then, from speaking to JMR's biographer recently, the best of the author's work in that field is to be found elsewhere. 'I Had to Go Sick' was excellent though. As a devotee of 1940s writers in general, JMR's encounters with the likes of Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly and Dylan Thomas were a real highlight of this volume. The book perhaps peters out a little towards the end, but then so did the author's life and career. The standard of writing is consistently high and there's always a catty observation or witty aside just around the corner. Recommended, and I'm sure I will enjoy discovering the rest of JMR's works in the months and years ahead.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews