19/03/2025
Riots, Slum Landlords…It’s Carnival Time!!!
The other day I was having a think about London's writers and what they bring to its cultural skyline. Charles Dickens, obviously, leapt into my head instantly but, as a subject, I discounted him pretty quickly. Too Victorian, and almost a cliche in his own way (although his descriptions of slums and the Rookeries do have echoes in my choice.)
Having been lucky enough to have stayed in a friend’s Notting Hill flat (pre-Covid now)…there is only one author who comes to mind. Probably not universally known nor lauded but he certainly encapsulated the zeitgeist of Notting Hill and the 1950s.
Notting Hill has become an affluent area but its history doesn’t reflect this. It is home to the Portobello Market, the iconic pastel-coloured houses (made famous by Hugh Grant and co), quirky museums (Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising is well worth a visit) and art galleries and not to mention the multitude of bars and restaurants that are dotted all over the place.
However, throughout the 20th century the story has been a little different. The area was working class in the 19th century with potteries and piggeries very much to the fore. It then became gentrified in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and, in turn, became a very down at heel area in the mid-1920s.
The large houses that make up a lot of the housing in the area were sub-divided into multi-occupancy flats which were occupied by, mainly, Caribbean immigrants (those of the “Windrush generation and after) which in turn lead to the rise of the slum landlord, most notably Peter Rachman, a nasty vicious landlord who employed equally nasty and vicious “rent collectors”. In 1958 a race riot, which continued over 5-6 days, broke out…Teddy Boys were mainly to blame, but they were most definitely race-based.
So this brings me to the author…I know you were thinking when is he going to get to the point…
Colin MacInnes was born in August 1914; his father was a singer and his mother was a novelist (perhaps I should do a piece about her. Her pen name was Angela Thirkell, and her novels were bestsellers in their day.) His great grandfather was the pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and he was related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. His parents divorced and she re-married and went to Australia with her new family taking Colin with her.
Colin returned to the northern hemisphere in 1930 and worked in Brussels for 5 years before returning to London to study painting at the London Polytechnic School and School of Painting and Drawing in north London.
He served in the British Intelligence Corps during World War 2 and worked in occupied Germany which inspired his first novel “To the Victors the Spoils”. After the war he wrote scripts for the BBC until he was able to make his living from his writing.
He is best-known for his “London Trilogy” which is made up of “City of Spades”, “Absolute Beginners” and “Mr Love and Justice.” All of these are set in the Notting Hill area and include subjects such as urban squalor, racial issues, bi-sexuality, drugs, anarchy and decadence.
He was openly bi-sexual at a time when homosexuality was illegal, a prodigious drinker bordering on the alcoholic and a political radical – anti-racism was his chief cause; He was heavily involved in the Star’s Campaign for Inter-Racial Friendship and spent his life involved in several black liberation campaigns.
For Britain’s reading public MacInnes was the first to chronicle the culture of the new immigrants to London. Ray Gosling, a friend of Macinnes’s and a broadcaster was quoted in a Guardian article, “What Colin did is this: while Alan Sillitoe and people were rediscovering the English working class, Colin also spotted 2 other things, that the kids were taking over and that the future was multi-coloured.”
In 1986 a film version of “Absolute Beginners” was released…although the old joke about it not being released but it escaped is perfectly valid. Universally slammed the only decent thing about it is the theme tune…so click on the link and enjoy…
The official music video for David Bowie - Absolute BeginnersAbsolute Beginners was released in 1986 and featured as the theme song to the film of the same n...
