SPIV CITY

London lowlife writing

Patrick Hamilton, James Curtis, Paul Willetts, Gerald Kersh

London Books has teamed up with Paul Willetts, the Sohemian Society and Black Spring Press to present Spiv City, a series of events that evoke the West End underworld of the 1930s and 1940s – a smoke-filled milieu awash with snappily-dressed spivs, heavy-drinking wide boys, big-hearted tarts and trigger-happy gunmen.

Hosted by Paul Willetts, biographer of the Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross, the Spiv City events feature dramatised readings by Callum Coates, Tony Austin and Felicity Redman, actors fresh from performances at the Old Vic and Globe Theatre.

They will be performing extracts from the work of Patrick Hamilton, author of Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky; Gerald Kersh, who wrote Night And The City, which provided the basis for the soon-to-be reissued film noir; and James Curtis, cult author of The Gilt Kid and They Drive By Night.

The evening also features an extract from Willetts’s topical non-fiction story of post-war gun-crime, North Soho 999, described by the critic Philip French, writing in The TLS, as a ‘tour-de-force that provides a fascinating account of a vanished Britain.’

Each event is approximately 60 minutes long, plus an interval. Tickets are available from the venues listed.