A pitch-black comedy set in London overshadowed by the looming threat of the Second World War, Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square. London, 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earls Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation. Netta is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George. George is adrift in a drunken hell, except in his 'dead' moments, when something goes click in his head and he realizes, without a doubt, that he must kill her. In the darkly comic Hangove...

Premiering in London in 1929 before moving to Broadway, this play, inspired by a true story, was adapted by Hitchcock into a film starring Jimmy Stewart.They believed they had committed the perfect crime. In fact, university students Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo were so assured of how expertly they had covered up their heartless murder of a fellow undergraduate, they decided to throw a dinner party. Using the wooden chest that contains the corpse as a table...

'I don't know how I became so filled with hate. I find it shocking that I did. Somebody said to me that war affects us in all kinds of ways, and that drinking is only one of them. Perhaps hating people is another. Perhaps sex is too.'1943, Henley-on-Thames. Miss Roach is forced by the war to flee London for the Rosamund Tea Rooms boarding house, a place as grey and lonely as its residents. From the safety of these new quarters, her war effort now consists of a thousand pet...

NYRB Classics presents 3 darkly humorous, atmospheric novellas of love and disappointment, set in a run-down London pub after WWI—from the author of the Hitchcock classics Gaslight and Rope.“Bleak and brilliant. . . an authentic lost classic.” —The GuardianFeaturing a Dickensian cast of pubcrawlers, prostitutes, lowlifes, and just plain losers who are looking for love—or just an ear to bend—Hamilton’s novels are a...

Patrick Hamilton's Rope is a taut theatrical study of murder, vanity, and moral derangement, cast in the elegant form of a drawing-room thriller. Set almost entirely in one room and unfolding with near-classical unity, the play converts polite conversation into an instrument of suspense. Its notorious premise—two young men conceal a corpse in a chest while entertaining guests around it—allows Hamilton to examine decadent intellectualism, class arrogance, and the dangerous glamour of "super...

Patrick Hamilton's *Rope* is a taut psychological thriller and a notable experiment in theatrical suspense. Set largely in a single room during the aftermath of a murder, the play follows two privileged young men who conceal their victim's body in a chest while entertaining guests above it. Hamilton gradually transforms ordinary conversation, social ritual, and comic unease into mechanisms of exposure, allowing tension to arise as much from pauses and evasions as from action. Its claustrop...

'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah Waters'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick HornbyPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.Ernest Ral...

'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah Waters'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick HornbyPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.Improm...

“Gritty, real, tough, and sardonic.” —Nick Hornby, author of Funny Girl“Fabulously poignant.” —Sarah Waters, author of FingersmithAs World War II drags on, the lonely Miss Roach flees London for the dull but ostensible safety of a suburban boarding house in this “pitch-perfect comedy” about “the passions and tensions of war” (The Independent).England in the middle of World War II, a war tha...

'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick Hornby'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah WatersPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.'Beyon...

'All his novels are terrific' Sarah WatersPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.In Craven House, among the shifting, uncertain world of the English boarding house, with its sad population of the shabby genteel on the way down - and the eternal optimists who would never get up or on - the young Patrick Hamilton, with loving, horrified fascination,...

'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah Waters'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick HornbyPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.West Kensi...