In the spring of 1949, Jack Agass belatedly returns from the war to the working class street in Islington where he grew up. A proud, supportive community — with a pub and a barber shop, and a common love of The Arsenal. But the street has changed. Jack eventually finds his footing but he’s haunted by a yearning for his old childhood friend Rosie Hogarth, and for the pre-war security and certainties she represents. Rosie has moved out and up — living bohemian-style in Bloomsbury. He thinks she’s selling sex, but is he right?

A taut and very human drama is played out through the summer and autumn of the year. In his first London novel, Alexander Baron provides one of the most powerful and compassionate evocations of a working class community in the throes of profound change.

Alexander Baron wrote many novels and books of short stories, including the classic war novel From the City, >From the Plough and classic Hackney book of the 60s, The Lowlife (both recently republished by Black Spring). His novel King Dido is published by Five Leaves. By the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC’s Play for Today. He also wrote for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By and wrote two Hollywood screenplays.
Rosie Hogarth is introduced by Andrew Whitehead, who works for the BBC World Service and is a former BBC political
and Indian correspondent.

London by night in the 1940s. The decaying back streets of Soho and the, then, sad but elegant squares of Bloomsbury provide the backdrop for a range of characters, making a living – or not making a living – in dubious way in this satirical novel. Ivan Ginsberg tries to escape his failure by setting up a literary magazine, Scamp. The book is introduced by Iain Sinclair who spent decades trying to trace the mysterious Roland Camberton, whose life was as strange as many of his characters.

Original cover by John Minton re-used.

Roland Camberton (Henry Cohen) was born in Manchester in 1921
and was educated in Hackney. After RAF service he worked in
various jobs. After his second novel, Rain on the Pavements he
vanished almost without trace, publishing nothing more.

Camberton’s second novel is a coming of age portrayal of “down Hackney”, home of David Hirsch, who steadily leaves behind his Jewish upbringing in adolescence to explore the wider world of London. Typically there is wide array of humorous characters in his portrayal of Hackney and the more cosmopolitan world Hirsch is drawn towards.

Original cover by John Minton re-used

Roland Camberton (Henry Cohen) was born in Manchester in
1921 and was educated in Hackney. After RAF service he worked
in various jobs. After his second novel, Rain on the Pavements he
vanished almost without trace, publishing nothing more.

1911, East London. The police collaborate with racketeers to keep an uneasy peace, periodically broken by vicious street wars. Dido Peach comes to prominence running protection rackets by breaking the unwritten rules of the underworld. His fall is just as spectacular, shaking even the callous and vicious world he lived in.

"Enthralling" - Sunday Times

"Alexander Baron was a skilled traditionalist, a contriver of plotdriven, socially perceptive meditations on place." - Iain Sinclair

Alexander Baron is a major writer of the past. His From the City, From the Plough was a classic of writing about WWII. The re-issue of his The Lowlife is currently on hold pending a film deal, the last publication of which was introduced by Iain Sinclair, long a champion of Alexander Baron’s work.