Colin MacInnes

A twentieth century cult classic, Absolute Beginners remains the style bible for anyone interested in Mod culture and paints a vivid picture of a changing society with insight and sensitivity.

Absolute Beginners

City of Spades

Les blancs-becs, ce sont les teenagers britanniques, jeunes gens entre treize et vingt ans. Ils vivent dans les bas quartiers de Londres en compagnie d'Africains, d'Antillais, d'Indiens. Epris de liberté, le narrateur, pour gagner sa vie, fait des travaux de photographie relevant de la pornographie. Une jeune vendeuse de maison de couture, Suzette, l'aide à trouver des clients. Elle a une attirance très marquée pour les Noirs, ce qui ne l'empêche pas d'être amoureuse du narrateur, avec lequel elle se dispute, qu'elle quitte et qu'elle retrouve. Elle se jettera dans ses bras la nuit où éclatent des émeutes raciales fomentées par les Teddy Boys.

Les blancs-becs

Colin MacInnes was a sergeant in a Field Security detachment in the Second World War. In this imaginative record of actual experiences he describes the progress of his detachment through Holland, Germany and Belgium in a rapid succession of incidents, full of humanity, light-heartedness and wit. But it is a great deal more than just a fascinating account of the war; written in the 1950s, it was a sufficient distance away for the war experience to have been digested, yet close enough for it to be fresh. Running through the seemingly gentle stories he tells are undercurrents of emotion which are moving, disturbing and deeply poignant.

To the Victors the Spoils

The London Novels is an omnibus of 3 great British novels: "Mr. Love & Justice", "City of Spades" and "Absolute Beginners".

His Three London Novels: City of Spades: Absolute Beginners: Mr Love and Justice

The Colin MacInnes Omnibus

Australia, 1950. The rarely-spotted duck-billed platypus is rumoured to bring you luck. Sixteen-year-old June Westley is an ideal daughter - kind, considerate, loving, and far more at ease in the Bush pioneered by her forefathers than her own father, Arthur, who spends his days waxing the Buick in the Australian sun. One day she spots a platypus and, sure enough, luck seems to shine down on her when she falls in love with a young musician. At first their affair is enchanting and passionate; but soon they are forced to confront family hostility and jealousies, and the heritage of madness and homosexuality that threaten to destroy their relationship. A sympathetic picture of outsiders in a cloistered world, June in Her Spring is an idyllic and sensuous tale of the confusion, horror and tentative delights of first love.

June in Her Spring

City of Spades. Absolute Beginners. Mr. Love and Justice

The London Novels

Helen Bailey, a faded beauty throws popular parties at her Australian ranch, Cootamundra, while her husband Walter, retreats more and more into depression

All Day Saturday

Tony Gould, in his biography of Colin MacInnes - Inside Outsider (reissued by Faber Finds) - is in no doubt, 'the volume of essays, England, Half English, contains the best of his writing. The range is impressive too: from expected pieces on popular culture (e.g. '"Pop Songs and Teenagers'" and '"Sharp Schmutter"'), to an essay on the London drinking clubs ('"See You at Mabel's'" - 'It's five past three in the afternoon, the London pubs have closed, you're dying for a drink. What happens?), and substantial articles on Nikolaus Pevsner (whom MacInnes described as this 'thoroughly inside outsider') and Ada Leverson (Oscar Wilde's 'The Sphinx' 'whose name, ' as MacInnes says 'is so honourably remembered and whose writing remains disproportionately unread' - alas still true). 'To read England, Half English is to be reminded how few writers there are nowadays who are prepared even to attempt what should be the writer's first task; simply to tell us how we live ... who will bother to look at the way we dress and take our holidays, who will listen to the music that erupts from our loudspeakers, who will try patiently and assiduously to see if we can learn something from the crowds, you and I among them, who swarm on the pavement outside his windom.' Dan Jacobson, "New Statesman" "" 'He was, in short, the first Pop anthropologist, the first post-war style sub-culture essayist: he created the trade.' Peter York, "Harpers & Queen"

A Polyphoto of the Fifties

England, Half English

Three Years to Play

‘I’d say they’re making money out of love – or out of sex, at any rate. And personally, darling, I consider love as sacred: the one and only really sacred thing that’s left: and if you make money out of that, then you’re destructive and should be destroyed.’ Frankie Love, new to the business of crime, seems to run his illegal life on strictly fair principles. Meanwhile Edward Justice, recently appointed member of the vice squad, finds his upholding of the law complicated by love for his girl. In London’s world of corruption and crime, where does the line between justice and immorality really lie? Love is travestied in the activities of the prostitute, justice mocked in the procedure of the vice squad. In this thought provoking and humorous tale, Colin MacInnes writes with an authenticity which only an intimate knowledge of the seamier side of life can deliver.

Mr Love and Justice

Mrs. Helen Bailey, a faded femme fatale, throws parties at Cootamundra Station in Australia each Saturday. Everyone has a good time except her husband. One Saturday a stranger comes, provoking all manner of desires and changing everyone's life.

Colin MacInnes

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