Published: 13 January, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

the life of reclusive author Roland Camberton, who disappeared in the 1950s, just as his career was taking off

THE Somerset Maugham prize for 1951 had a book on the shortlist that has since become a classic: Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim was a shoo-in, and considering its place in the canon of mid-20th century literature, it seems incredible it was not novel of the year. 

Instead, the winner was a book called Scamp, a cynical, comic take on the life of Ivan Ginsberg, a scruffy pseudo-intellectual living in Soho, seeking to establish a literary magazine. And while Amis, the author of the book that didn’t win has become a major figure in English Literature, Roland Camberton, the man who beat Amis to the prize, had dis­appeared completely within a couple of years.

Camberton – real name Henry Cohen – went on to pen another book called Rain On The Pavement, about his native Hackney, in 1952. 

He then simply disappeared. His story has become a matter of some interest for fans of his two works – and author Iain Sinclair, who has written a foreword to the books, repub­lished for the first time since the 1950s, has turned detective to piece together the rest of Camberton’s life.

While from the same place and era of some the great East End Jewish writers such as Bernard Kops, Harold Pinter, Arnold Wesker and Emanuel Litvinoff, Camberton was always considered an outsider. 

Sinclair recalls spotting the Camberton books at his second-hand stall in Islington. Inspired by them, he set out to find out more about this forgotten genius. “You would get book buffs coming in and speaking endlessly about their fav­ourite authors,” he says. 

“One man mentioned Camberton on a few occasions, and I remembered the name when I saw two volumes for sale. I was struck by a cover by Royal Academy illustrator John Minton, so I bought them.”

Sinclair realised he had in his hands the works of a man whose writing was unique – and who had been completely lost. He set out to discover what had become of the author.

“He was mysterious. There was no informa­tion out there. I had given up trying until one day I heard of a recording done by William Burroughs, speaking with Roland Camberton.”

The recording had been made by a mutual friend called Douglas Lyne, who had once lent Burroughs a pound. When Burroughs emerged from a drug-addled trip to Tangier, he tracked down his friend to repay him. They went to a Soho pub and were joined by Camberton. The three necked mul­tiple brandies and then retired to Lyne’s home, where he recorded the conversation they had on a reel to reel tape machine.

Details emerged: Camberton was born in Manchester in 1921 and moved to Hackney as a boy. He went to Hackney Downs School and served in the RAF as a wireless mechanic. He was a teacher at Covent Garden’s City Lit, and became a copy writer and translator. Tantalisingly, a manu­script, long since lost, recalled hitchhiking through Europe and is described as a British version of On The Road. It was never published. 

In Rain On The Pavement, the young protagonist describes adventures he had hitching through southern England – a precursor to the book which never made the light of day. 

Camberton is also recalled by writer Bernard Kops. He recalls meeting the author around 1952, when his books had just been a success: Kops was running a second-hand book stall in Cambridge Circus, and Camberton would sift through his titles. “He was tall, austere, and mono­syllabic,” Kops recalls. “He had a mysterious presence. He was interested in my writing but I found him evasive.”

Kops believes Camberton wrote brilliantly – but at the wrong time for lasting fame. “His style came too early,” he says. “He was Kitchen Sink, Beat and Angry Young Man, but before this was recognised.”

Kops also felt Camberton’s secretive nature may have had something to do with the atmosphere of Britain in the post-war period, where anti-Semitism was still rife. There was a drive by Jewish East Enders to assimilate, to Anglicise names, to move from areas their forefathers had lived in.

“He told me he was Jewish and a writer, but did not have a Jewish name,” recalls Kops.

“It was part of the time we were going through. He had an Englishness about him – as if he had been to Marlborough or Sandhurst. I suspected he was gay, but this was something you would never ask. I got the impression that he was a lost soul: there is no doubt he was an absolutely brilliant writer.”

Camberton worked for a time for film studio MGM and was seen by friends in Soho with an attractive woman des­cribed by Douglas Lyne as being “gentri­fied”. They stayed tog­ether until his death in 1965.

Rain On The Pavement is a selection of short stories put together to create a memoir. The autobiographical traits –  it includes descriptions of the Jewish Hackney of his childhood – are further underlined by a character called Uncle Jacob, a bicycle-pedaling intellectual and failed writer who shuns the world of literature, in a way that suggests this is what he set out to be all along. 

“He stopped as his career got going,” says Sinclair. “He was an outsider among outsiders.”

• Scamp and Rain on the Pavement are published in paperback by New London Editions, £9.99 each