Selected Stories

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.