Julian Maclaren-Ross, well known in his own lifetime and unfairly neglected after it, is now getting the attention he deserves. None of his letters have ever been published, and this collection comes out of extensive research and selection by Paul Willetts, Maclaren-Ross's biographer, the authority on the writer.

Richard Fanshawe never seems able to get a decent job or a decent girl. He spends his nights in a dingy boarding house and his days engaged in the dubious occupation of selling vacuum cleaners to housewives. In a grey English seaside town in the Depression, under the shadow of approaching war, there isn’t much hope of escape. That is, until Fanshawe meets ‘sultry-looking piece’ Sukie: dark, desirable – and married to his friend …

Julian Maclaren-Ross was one of the great Bohemians of literary London, who held court in the drinking dens of 1940s Fitzrovia. Vivid, louche and slangy, Of Love and Hunger conjures up his world of smoky pubs, prying landladies, unpaid debts and seedy love-nests with brilliant wit and acuity.