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Review
Roland Camberton can write, and in 'Scamp' he has produced one of the best novels I have read since the war. --JB Priestley
'Scamp' is Bloomsbury unmasked, an excursion into that hinterland where the republic of letters becomes an asphalt jungle traversed by streams of mild-and-bitter... --New Statesman
'Scamp' is Bloomsbury unmasked, an excursion into that hinterland where the republic of letters becomes an asphalt jungle traversed by streams of mild-and-bitter... --New Statesman
Product Description
As well as the elegant squares of Bloomsbury, Ivan Ginsberg walks the decaying back-streets of Soho, haunting cafes and pubs in company with an array of bohemian characters. As he wanders, his hopes of literary success seem further away than ever. With no capital and no backing, will he ever manage to produce 'Scamp', the literary magazine which gives this book its title?
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia Bohemians in the late 1940s had a grim life, it seems - wandering the bombed-out streets, hanging about in smoky pubs and all-night cafes and living in rat-infested top-floor rooms. Ivan Ginsberg is one of them, working-class Jewish from the East End, Cambridge-educated, but now scraping a living doing private tuition, hack journalism and lecturing at the City Lit (I guess nowadays he'd be teaching Creative Writing), while he tries to write short stories and to get funding for his new radical literary magazine, 'Scamp'. His best friend Bellie is supposedly a postgrad student, but spends his time chasing women. His friend Julius is young enough to still be optimistic. Film-extras, illegal divan manufacturers, students from St Martins, and generic bums make up the additional supporting cast, with plenty of wacky local characters: bar-room raconteur Angus Sternforth Simms (apparently based on Julian Maclaren-Ross); miserly property-millionaire Kagaranias, who looks like a tramp; Sid, the jazz intellectual; Panjitawarelam, the leader of the mystical poets... The plot meanders about (like the hero) from Tavistock Square, to the British Museum, the cinema ('Quai des Brumes'), the Afro-Cubano Club, Pedro's International Café Restaurant and Spiffhorn and Trunt's Wandsworth printers. The ending is like a Shakespearean comedy in its abrupt and thorough matchmaking, but the style is good-humoured while nonetheless touching on issues like racism, abortion, immigration, the post-war Labour government and artistic selling-out. This would-be-writers-and-artists social comedy reminds you that it wasn't only Paris that had a Bohemia in those days. Great to see this kind of writing coming back into print; it looks like Five Leaves have got a lot of similar stuff around.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Scamp had been out of print for many years when it was rediscovered by Iain Sinclair. Roland Camberton only wrote two books and died at the age of 44, feeling that he had failed at his cherished ambition of being a writer. Scamp is semi-autobiographical and is a wonderful evocation of a shabby, post-Second World War London of seedy cafes, pubs, Fleet Street, bomb sites and dance halls. It's very funny but rather sad too. Packed with eccentric characters and mad situations, it's well worth a read.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Imagine bottling all the grey disillusion and empty rhetoric of a life lived in London. Take a sip - shattered dreams on every page. If it wasn't for the one or two chapters that feel a bit slotted in to satisfy narrative drive, this book I'm sure would gain masterpiece status. Essential stuff for those interested in the shadowy corners of 50s & 60s Brit Lit.
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