Craven House Av Patrick Hamilton

<p><b>''All his novels are terrific'' Sarah Waters</b><br><br><b>Patrick Hamilton''s novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne''s new dance theatre production, <i>The Midnight Bell</i>.</b><br><br>In <i>Craven House</i>, 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, first mapped out the territory that he would make, uniquely, his own. <br><br>Although many of Hamilton''s lifelong interests are here, they are handled with a youthful brio and optimism conspicuously absent from his later work. The inmates of <i>Craven House</i> have their foibles, but most are indulgently treated by an author whose world view has yet to harden from scepticism into cynicism. <br><br>The generational conflicts of Hamilton''s own youth thread throughout the narrative, with hair bobbing and dancing as