Will I love Fowlers End?

I love the works of Gerald Kersh, a formidable author who wrote his best books in the 1940s and 1950s but was largely forgotten thereafter. This farcical masterpiece of his features the character Dan Laverock, an intelligent, educated young man from a good family who seems to fail at everything he tries and, even worse (perhaps due to his imposing size and roguishly scarred appearance), engenders ferocity in those with whom he disagrees.

He finds himself managing a decrepit and outdated silent cinema in one of London’s seediest and rowdiest nooks, encountering a barrage of con men, derelicts, and thieves.

Published in 1957, this book is one of the few comic novels about London, and it is genuinely funny.

In a dead-end suburb, variety entertainment is dying a painful death in a flea-pit cinema that attracts a parade of fantastical characters, from the Falstaffian impresario Sam Yudenow to a pair of Greek caterers and bomb makers.

It makes a lost world seem both alluring and deeply unsavoury.