This fascinating biography is in many ways as much the account of an extraordinary family as a chronicle of the rise and fall of an eccentric and driven literary talent. The bullying, boastful, but seriously insecure, Bernard and the long-suffering but suffocating Nellie raise three talented but damaged children. Neither Lalla nor Patrick shakes off the influence of these two very different, but equally powerful figures. Both pursue sexual pleasures as one route to escape and both become the victims of alcohol. Bernard, himself a heavy drinker with literary aspirations, continues to trouble Patrick and is never fully exorcised. He appears in many guises in the novels, most tellingly and loathsomely perhaps as the brilliantly realised sadistic bully Thwaites in "The Slaves of Solitude", a man of innate abilities in full flight from his inner terrors at the expense of any sensitive victim he can waylay, here the gentle and kindly Miss Roach.
The most extraordinary relationship is that with Patrick's elder brother, Bruce. Although based in Barbados for most of his adult life, Bruce is the one unrelentingly solid pillar in Patrick's unstable world. Himself a published novelist, Patrick's success and well-being remain his overriding concern. Despite long periods in which Patrick all but ignores him, lies to him and resents his moral shadow, Bruce never wavers in his support and admiration, negotiating his way through Patrick's neurotic need to nail his colours to whatever mast comes to hand, whether political - his not altogether convincing flirtation with communism, to his later shift to the right - and to his sexual infatuations and callous indifference to the feelings of his wives.
With skill Nigel Jones weaves the intricacies of this claustrophobically close family into serious, balanced and frequently perceptive insights into the writer. Patrick's world was a narrow one, London and its suburbs and more particularly the literary watering holes and underside of displaced individuals like himself. Although it is the film world that brings Patrick the public profile and wealth to further pursue his indulgences, it is the best of the novels that most fully reveal the originality of his talent. Both "The Slaves of Solitude" and "Hangover Square", now re-discovered and republished, should ensure that Patrick Hamilton is once more widely read. This wholly absorbing, involved but dispassionate biography itself deserves a wide readership and is likely to send most to explore the work of this wonderfully talented and self-destructive man.
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