Through a Glass Darkly - Life of Patrick Hamilton (Paperback, New edition)

Compiled with the help of access to his private papers, this is a biography of Patrick Hamilton, who was one of the most gifted and admired writers of his generation. Born in Sussex in 1904, the son of a clergyman, he published his first novel, "Craven House", in 1925, and within a few years had established a wide readership. Two plays - "Rope" (on which Hitchcock based his film) and "Gaslight" - brought him great commercial success, and his high point as a novelist was reached with "The Slaves of Solitude" and "Hangover Square". Hamilton was plagued by contradictions. Despite his genteel background, he became an expert chronicler of the English boarding-house, the twilight world of backstreet pubs and the quiet desperation of everyday life. An ideological Marxist, he reverted in later years to blimpish Toryism. Excessively and morbidly sensitive, he sought - with sometimes menacing zeal - his "ideal woman", and would then indulge with equal intensity in his taste for bondage with prostitutes. And, in keeping with one of his work's recurring themes, he drank himself to death.