Patrick Hamilton (March 17, 1904 - September 23, 1962) was an English playwright and novelist. He was well-regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley and study of his novels has been revived recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture. They display a strong sympathy for the disadvantaged, as well as an acerbic black humour. Doris Lessing wrote in The T...
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Patrick Hamilton (March 17, 1904 - September 23, 1962) was an English playwright and novelist. He was well-regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley and study of his novels has been revived recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture. They display a strong sympathy for the disadvantaged, as well as an acerbic black humour. Doris Lessing wrote in The Times in 1968: "Hamilton was a marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected".
He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in the Sussex village of Hassocks, near Brighton, to writer parents. 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. His education was patchy, and ended just after his fifteenth birthday when his mother withdrew him from Westminster School.
After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist in his early twenties with the...
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