The Gorse Trilogy is a series of three novels, the last published works of the author Patrick Hamilton. [1] The stories follow the anti-hero Ernest Ralph Gorse, whose heartlessness and lack of scruple are matched only by the inventiveness and panache with which he swindles his victims. He is thought to have been based on the real-life con-man and murderer Neville George Heath, who was executed in 1946. [2]
Gorse insinuates himself into the lives of his victims with his good looks and easy confidence, and always with a good story. His victims are women, and he flatters his way into their affections until he is in a position to turn things to his advantage. Graham Greene called The West Pier "the best book written about Brighton", [3] while L.P. Hartley said, "The entertainment value of this brilliantly told story could hardly be higher."[ citation needed ] Writing for The Independent , critic D. J. Taylor called Unknown Assailant "an inferior work" while The Guardian called it "drink-soaked." [1] [3]
An adaptation of Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse was produced by ITV in 1987 (called The Charmer and starring Nigel Havers). [3]
Gorse also appears as a secondary villain in the novel Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman.
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Robert Dennis Harris is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works centre on contemporary history. Harris was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was president of the Cambridge Union and editor of the student newspaper Varsity.
William McIlvanney was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He was known as Gus by friends and acquaintances. McIlvanney was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of Tartan Noir" and as Scotland's Camus.
William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
David Peace is an English writer. Best known for his UK-set novels Red Riding Quartet (1999–2002), GB84 (2004), The Damned Utd (2006), and Red or Dead (2013), Peace was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta in their 2003 list. His books often deal with themes of mental breakdown or derangement in the face of extreme circumstances. In an interview with David Mitchell he stated: "I was drawn to writing about individuals and societies in moments that are often extreme, and often at times of defeat, be they personal or broader, or both. I believe that in such moments, during such times, in how we react and how we live, we learn who we truly are, for better or worse."
Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton was an English playwright and novelist. He was well regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley, and study of his novels has been revived because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture. They display a strong sympathy for the poor, as well as an acerbic black humour. Doris Lessing wrote in The Times in 1968: "Hamilton was a marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected".
John Henry Lanchester is a British journalist and novelist.
Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton. Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton.
Gordon Burn was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction.
Sam Taylor is a British author, translator and former pop culture correspondent for The Observer, a job he left in 2001. His first book, The Republic of Trees, was published in 2005 and received critical acclaim. His second novel, The Amnesiac, tells the story of James Purdew, a man obsessed with uncovering the events of three years of his life about which he remembers nothing. Taylor lives in Texas with his family.
Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse is a 1953 novel by Patrick Hamilton, the second in the Gorse Trilogy.
Paul Kingsnorth is an English writer who lives in the west of Ireland. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project.
Chris Petit is an English novelist and filmmaker. During the 1970s he was Film Editor for Time Out and wrote in Melody Maker. His first film was the cult British road movie Radio On, while his 1982 film An Unsuitable Job for a Woman was entered into the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. His films often have a strong element of psychogeography, and he has worked frequently with the writer Iain Sinclair. He has also written a number of novels, including Robinson (1993).
The Charmer was a 1987 British television serial set in the 1930s, and starring Nigel Havers as Ralph Ernest Gorse, a seducing conman, Rosemary Leach as Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, a smitten victim widow and Bernard Hepton as Donald Stimpson, Plumleigh-Bruce's would-be beau, who vengefully pursues Gorse after he has conned her.
Edward Robin Pearce was an English political journalist and writer, known for being a leader writer for The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, and writing a number of biographies of political figures.
Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series written by American-British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise. The series is named after a line in the first book: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." The series consists of a trilogy of novels and three short stories.
Smiley’s People is a 1982 British six-part spy drama by the BBC. Directed by Simon Langton and produced by Jonathan Powell, it is the television adaptation of the 1979 spy novel Smiley's People by John le Carré, and a sequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Starring Alec Guinness, Michael Byrne, Anthony Bate and Bernard Hepton, it was first shown in the United Kingdom from 20 September to 25 October 1982, and in the United States beginning on 25 October 1982.
Mr. Mercedes is a novel by American writer Stephen King. He calls it his first hard-boiled detective book. It was published on June 3, 2014. It is the first volume in a trilogy, followed in 2015 by Finders Keepers, the first draft of which was finished around the time Mr. Mercedes was published, and End of Watch in 2016.
Leïla Slimani is a Franco-Moroccan writer and journalist. She is also a French diplomat in her capacity as the personal representative of the French president Emmanuel Macron to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. In 2016 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson douce.
The Forerunner Saga is a trilogy of science fiction novels by Greg Bear, based on the Halo series of video games. The books in the series are Halo: Cryptum (2011), Primordium (2012), and Silentium (2013). The books were released in hardcover, e-book, paperback, and audiobook. Bear was given little restriction on the story of the novel; the Halo universe had not yet been explored in that time period.