He was born in 1912 into a family which had once been wealthy but whose wealth was slowly diminishing. When MacLaren-Ross was a young man, that wealth was large enough to allow his father and his family to live a life of leisure, although for some reason they always rented property rather than bought it. Buying might have been a better investment, but judging by the many, many bad decisions MacLaren-Ross made, good judgment was scarce in that family,
The Ross family – Julian MacLaren-Ross’s original name was, in fact, the simpler and a little more straightforward James Ross – lived in South London, where he was born in 1912. Then they moved to the South Coast of England
MacLaren-Ross did not have any formal schooling until his early teens, though by when he was bi-lingual in English and French.
In early 1930s he struck out on his own, and moved to London, to Soho and its environs, sustained by an allowance from his grandfather that for several years provided him with an income sufficient to live on.
He saw himself as a literary man, a man of letters, and he did indeed have a facility with words, although he did not get any of his short stories yet published.
Unfortunately, the Depression of the 1930s put paid to all that, and his allowance came to an end and MacLaren-Ross was obliged to find some way of earning his living. He tried to do this by working, in turn, for two vacuum cleaner companies, selling their product from door-to-door.
Unfortunately, the Depression of the 1930s put paid to all that, and his allowance came to an end and MacLaren-Ross was obliged to find some way of earning his living. He tried to do this by working, in turn, for two vacuum cleaner companies, selling their product from door-to-door.
That phase of his life lasted only a few months and he finally turned to the local Bognor Labour Exchange for unemployment benefit, cutting quite a dash sporting a cane (which he did all of his life) and wearing an expensive overcoat. Then when World War II started, he was eventually drafted into the Army.
His military career was not at all successful, not least because an old knee injury was exacerbated by the square-bashing he had to take part in but was eventually excuse, and he was finally detailed to typing and clerical duties. It was during those early years that he wrote a few ‘Army stories’, mainly recounting, in exaggerated form, what had been happening to him. These established his name with some in the literary world but in some ways he lived off that reputation for rather too long.
After MacLaren-Ross apparently went absent without leave – he had, in fact, simply not returned on time because he was trying to persuade the War Office in London to give him a wartime role he felt was more suited to his abilities – he was marked down for a court martial. In the process of being dishonourably discharged he was sectioned to an Army mental hospital.
Once he and the military had finally parted company, in 1944, he returned to London for Soho where, more or less, he spent the remaining 20 years of his increasingly rickety and often destitute life. He died of heart failure at the age of 53.
Over those 20 years, MacLaren Ross wrote quite a few short stories, two novels, a many radio scripts and undertook some screenwriting, for television as well as for films. He did a great deal of book reviewing and essays (and his friend, the novelist Anthony Powell, who was the Times Literary Supplement’s reviews editors, passed a lot of work his way. He also got work from Cyril Connolly who was editing the journal Encounter).
His military career was not at all successful, not least because an old knee injury was exacerbated by the square-bashing he had to take part in but was eventually excuse, and he was finally detailed to typing and clerical duties. It was during those early years that he wrote a few ‘Army stories’, mainly recounting, in exaggerated form, what had been happening to him. These established his name with some in the literary world but in some ways he lived off that reputation for rather too long.
After MacLaren-Ross apparently went absent without leave – he had, in fact, simply not returned on time because he was trying to persuade the War Office in London to give him a wartime role he felt was more suited to his abilities – he was marked down for a court martial. In the process of being dishonourably discharged he was sectioned to an Army mental hospital.
Once he and the military had finally parted company, in 1944, he returned to London for Soho where, more or less, he spent the remaining 20 years of his increasingly rickety and often destitute life. He died of heart failure at the age of 53.
Over those 20 years, MacLaren Ross wrote quite a few short stories, two novels, a many radio scripts and undertook some screenwriting, for television as well as for films. He did a great deal of book reviewing and essays (and his friend, the novelist Anthony Powell, who was the Times Literary Supplement’s reviews editors, passed a lot of work his way. He also got work from Cyril Connolly who was editing the journal Encounter).
He haunted the literary magazines and publishing houses of London trying to sell his work, and although he was occasionally disciplined enough to write when he chose to be disciplined, his bad habit of talking publishers into giving him an advance for a work he proposed writing, then not delivering it – and even ‘selling’ the same proposal to several different publishers – alienated more and more of them. He thus he dissipated any of the goodwill he might at first have enjoyed.
MacLaren-Ross spent all his time after noon – he never rose before then – in number of pubs and he drank a great deal too much. When the pubs were shut between 2.30pm and 5pm, he went to one of several drinking clubs. His continual drinking meant he was always short of money. He cadged drinks and loans from pub and bar acquaintances and never bought a round or paid them back.
After closing time, he went to one or two late night drinking clubs are what passed for restaurants where he would eat the only solid food of the day. Once back at wherever happened to be his home in the early hours, he completed long overnight writing stints, keeping himself awake and alert by downing amphetamines.
MacLaren-Ross was markedly egocentric and much given to holding forth in long monologues about himself and his plans and stories he intended to write to a circle of admirers. His anecdotes were thought to be very amusing, but as in time he took to telling the same anecdotes over and over again, in his last few years folk began to avoid him, especially as no one could ever get a word in edgeways.
MacLaren-Ross spent all his time after noon – he never rose before then – in number of pubs and he drank a great deal too much. When the pubs were shut between 2.30pm and 5pm, he went to one of several drinking clubs. His continual drinking meant he was always short of money. He cadged drinks and loans from pub and bar acquaintances and never bought a round or paid them back.
After closing time, he went to one or two late night drinking clubs are what passed for restaurants where he would eat the only solid food of the day. Once back at wherever happened to be his home in the early hours, he completed long overnight writing stints, keeping himself awake and alert by downing amphetamines.
MacLaren-Ross was markedly egocentric and much given to holding forth in long monologues about himself and his plans and stories he intended to write to a circle of admirers. His anecdotes were thought to be very amusing, but as in time he took to telling the same anecdotes over and over again, in his last few years folk began to avoid him, especially as no one could ever get a word in edgeways.
In time, as he aged from a charming thirtysomething whose tales were enthralling into a man in his late forties who slowly came to be regarded by many as a bore best avoided. He habitually carried a silver-topped walking stick and almost always wore aviator-style sunglasses, indoors and out, night and day.
As a tall, dark-haired and good-looking man in his thirties during the last years of the war and the early post-war years, he was not short of a bevy of admirers who were inclined to indulge him and his eccentricities. But when the war ended, then then the decade, with the 1950s his day in the sun was coming to a close. The world moved on, but MacLaren-Ross did not.
In those last 20 years of his life since 1943 he lived in hotels, many quite grand, almost always in Central London within walking distance of Soho and what came to be known as Fitzrovia; sometimes he and the woman he was then with would live for a few weeks or a month or two in a flat, the rents being paid mainly by his partner. In time, they became fed up with the lifestyle and left him, but he soon had another on his arm.
Because he was always drinking his money away – and pissing the readies right up the wall by never using the Tube and always travelling by taxi cab, even short distances – he always skipped out of hotels because he could not settle his bill or was evicted from his apartments as the rent so so much in arrears.
Some in the literary world – among whom were also Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, the poet and publisher John Lehman and the ubiquitous Connolly (who also made little of himself and did not do justice to whatever talent he was thought to have) – were said to have admired MacLaren-Ross’s work.
Yet frankly that also says rather less than one might assume: it cost nothing for an established writer to give a fellow, less successful scribbler a nod of praise, and such vaunted mutual plaudits are all part of the literary game. It might be no more than a throwaway phrase, in fact, or a good review. In the somewhat self-regarding literary world such matters take on an importance they hardly deserve. Warm words are cheap and cost nothing.
Similarly with his acquaintanceships: with the poet Dylan Thomas (with whom he worked in the Ministry of Information for a while), painters and composers and other eccentrics knocking about the demi-monde of Soho: MacLaren-Ross would have been just one of many who knew them and who they all knew. Others were Quentin Crisp, John Minton, Nina Hamnett, Joan Wyndham, Aleister Crowley, John Deakin, Augustus John, Robert Colquhoun, Olivia Manning and Robert MacBryde, all certainly Soho stalwarts and all just was well-known to the folk boozing in Soho.
He stood out because of his cane, his often grand manner, his commanding and sometimes overbearing presence and his perennial sunglasses (which he even refused to remove in the mid-1950s when provided a short five-minute interview for BBC TV).
As a tall, dark-haired and good-looking man in his thirties during the last years of the war and the early post-war years, he was not short of a bevy of admirers who were inclined to indulge him and his eccentricities. But when the war ended, then then the decade, with the 1950s his day in the sun was coming to a close. The world moved on, but MacLaren-Ross did not.
In those last 20 years of his life since 1943 he lived in hotels, many quite grand, almost always in Central London within walking distance of Soho and what came to be known as Fitzrovia; sometimes he and the woman he was then with would live for a few weeks or a month or two in a flat, the rents being paid mainly by his partner. In time, they became fed up with the lifestyle and left him, but he soon had another on his arm.
Because he was always drinking his money away – and pissing the readies right up the wall by never using the Tube and always travelling by taxi cab, even short distances – he always skipped out of hotels because he could not settle his bill or was evicted from his apartments as the rent so so much in arrears.
Some in the literary world – among whom were also Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, the poet and publisher John Lehman and the ubiquitous Connolly (who also made little of himself and did not do justice to whatever talent he was thought to have) – were said to have admired MacLaren-Ross’s work.
Yet frankly that also says rather less than one might assume: it cost nothing for an established writer to give a fellow, less successful scribbler a nod of praise, and such vaunted mutual plaudits are all part of the literary game. It might be no more than a throwaway phrase, in fact, or a good review. In the somewhat self-regarding literary world such matters take on an importance they hardly deserve. Warm words are cheap and cost nothing.
Similarly with his acquaintanceships: with the poet Dylan Thomas (with whom he worked in the Ministry of Information for a while), painters and composers and other eccentrics knocking about the demi-monde of Soho: MacLaren-Ross would have been just one of many who knew them and who they all knew. Others were Quentin Crisp, John Minton, Nina Hamnett, Joan Wyndham, Aleister Crowley, John Deakin, Augustus John, Robert Colquhoun, Olivia Manning and Robert MacBryde, all certainly Soho stalwarts and all just was well-known to the folk boozing in Soho.
He stood out because of his cane, his often grand manner, his commanding and sometimes overbearing presence and his perennial sunglasses (which he even refused to remove in the mid-1950s when provided a short five-minute interview for BBC TV).
He could and did impress with his deep knowledge of books and films (helped by a very good memory), but again there might be less to this than meets the eye: he had the knack of impressing his drinking circle when he held forth, but to what purpose? Discuss.
What of that work? Well, he was lucky that when he eventually started finding a little success with his writing, the wartime conditions – not least because of the paper shortage – made the short story form popular and magazines were crying out for them.
His tales were said to have been succinct, tightly written and often funny, initially in their sardonic account of Army life. But when the war ended, that market also largely closed down as the country at large wanted to put the hardships behind them and no longer wanted to hear Army stories.
In time MacLaren-Ross took to writing thrillers, both for print and as radio plays. Much of his fiction, in whatever form, was a re-working of his life. Often this could be quite macabre: still obsessed with George Orwell’s young widow and angry that she showed no interest in him despite what seemed like an initial attraction, MacLaren-Ross wrote a story, then developed it into a radio play, then again reworked into a film script a scenario in which he murders her (or rather a woman who stands in for her).
If it is difficult to see what was exceptional about MacLaren-Ross’s fiction and drama, it is also a little difficult to see why Paul Willetts thought a ‘life of Julian MacLaren-Ross’ needed to be written. What Willetts has produced is oddly out of kilter.
A good biographer might use his skills to bring to life and substance pretty much any subject, even one whose existence did not seem to the lay reader at all exciting. But sadly Willetts is not that biographer.
The early chapters of his biography are entertaining and intriguing enough, but after we hear of the early life, it all falls a little flat and dull, and eventually quite tedious when Willetts provides us with his longwinded account of MacLaren-Ross’s time in the Army and mental hospital. Such detail, and there is a lot of it, is not gripping in any way I know.
Willetts certainly did a lot of very hard working tracking down any number of his details, but surely to goodness he did not have to include every single last one? We get what seems like an almost daily account of MacLaren-Ross’s movements between 1943 and his death: where he briefly stayed the landlord or landlady’s name, from which apartments and how soon he was evicted, in which hotels he ran up huge bills, which publisher, radio producer, film company owner or magazine editor he went to see and why and on and on and so on. It does very little for, and adds nothing much to the biography: it just gets very wearing.
The irony is that MacLaren-Ross, for all his supposed larger than life persona just doesn’t really come alive: he seems to occupy a no-man’s land between two and three dimensions. I suspect a shorter volume, possibly just a third as long and more of a memoir (Strictly speaking such a book could never be ‘a memoir’ because Willetts never actually knew MacLaren-Ross – Ed.) would have worked and given Willets attempt to portray the man some shape and, dare I say it, rather more interest. As it is, you end up thinking ‘oh well’.
By the way, why are we so intrigued by, and interested in, the kind of demi-monde life – here in wartime Soho, but there are surely many, many other such spots around the world at all times – lived by alcoholics such as MacLaren-Ross?
There are the standard cliches that ‘they live life to the full’ and and do they really live ‘more authentically’ than us poor wage slaves and early-to-bedders? Are they really any happier, more fulfilled, of more consequence? MacLaren-Ross certainly wasn’t.
Willetts often makes the point that when MacLaren-Ross went to visit his friends Mac and his wife Lydia and Dan and Winifred Davin, he appreciated the calm domesticity he found there. And domesticity is not per see ‘boring’. Sadly, in time both Lydia and Winifred got terminally annoyed with MacLaren-Ross’s self-centred lack of consideration (which seems to have been considerable and they had enormous patience), and before he died, both friendships had come to an end.
One good grace of Willett’s biography is that he doesn’t attempt any of that sorry, silly middle-brow Sunday paper supplement psychoanalysis. From Willetts’ we get the facts, ma’am, just the facts (though as I point out, pretty much too many of them in all their trivial detail). I don’t doubt MacLaren-Ross on couch would have delighted many a Freudian voyeur, yet I don’t doubt so, too, would any of the other legion of his fellow Soho boozing pals.
What of that work? Well, he was lucky that when he eventually started finding a little success with his writing, the wartime conditions – not least because of the paper shortage – made the short story form popular and magazines were crying out for them.
His tales were said to have been succinct, tightly written and often funny, initially in their sardonic account of Army life. But when the war ended, that market also largely closed down as the country at large wanted to put the hardships behind them and no longer wanted to hear Army stories.
In time MacLaren-Ross took to writing thrillers, both for print and as radio plays. Much of his fiction, in whatever form, was a re-working of his life. Often this could be quite macabre: still obsessed with George Orwell’s young widow and angry that she showed no interest in him despite what seemed like an initial attraction, MacLaren-Ross wrote a story, then developed it into a radio play, then again reworked into a film script a scenario in which he murders her (or rather a woman who stands in for her).
If it is difficult to see what was exceptional about MacLaren-Ross’s fiction and drama, it is also a little difficult to see why Paul Willetts thought a ‘life of Julian MacLaren-Ross’ needed to be written. What Willetts has produced is oddly out of kilter.
A good biographer might use his skills to bring to life and substance pretty much any subject, even one whose existence did not seem to the lay reader at all exciting. But sadly Willetts is not that biographer.
The early chapters of his biography are entertaining and intriguing enough, but after we hear of the early life, it all falls a little flat and dull, and eventually quite tedious when Willetts provides us with his longwinded account of MacLaren-Ross’s time in the Army and mental hospital. Such detail, and there is a lot of it, is not gripping in any way I know.
Willetts certainly did a lot of very hard working tracking down any number of his details, but surely to goodness he did not have to include every single last one? We get what seems like an almost daily account of MacLaren-Ross’s movements between 1943 and his death: where he briefly stayed the landlord or landlady’s name, from which apartments and how soon he was evicted, in which hotels he ran up huge bills, which publisher, radio producer, film company owner or magazine editor he went to see and why and on and on and so on. It does very little for, and adds nothing much to the biography: it just gets very wearing.
The irony is that MacLaren-Ross, for all his supposed larger than life persona just doesn’t really come alive: he seems to occupy a no-man’s land between two and three dimensions. I suspect a shorter volume, possibly just a third as long and more of a memoir (Strictly speaking such a book could never be ‘a memoir’ because Willetts never actually knew MacLaren-Ross – Ed.) would have worked and given Willets attempt to portray the man some shape and, dare I say it, rather more interest. As it is, you end up thinking ‘oh well’.
By the way, why are we so intrigued by, and interested in, the kind of demi-monde life – here in wartime Soho, but there are surely many, many other such spots around the world at all times – lived by alcoholics such as MacLaren-Ross?
There are the standard cliches that ‘they live life to the full’ and and do they really live ‘more authentically’ than us poor wage slaves and early-to-bedders? Are they really any happier, more fulfilled, of more consequence? MacLaren-Ross certainly wasn’t.
Willetts often makes the point that when MacLaren-Ross went to visit his friends Mac and his wife Lydia and Dan and Winifred Davin, he appreciated the calm domesticity he found there. And domesticity is not per see ‘boring’. Sadly, in time both Lydia and Winifred got terminally annoyed with MacLaren-Ross’s self-centred lack of consideration (which seems to have been considerable and they had enormous patience), and before he died, both friendships had come to an end.
One good grace of Willett’s biography is that he doesn’t attempt any of that sorry, silly middle-brow Sunday paper supplement psychoanalysis. From Willetts’ we get the facts, ma’am, just the facts (though as I point out, pretty much too many of them in all their trivial detail). I don’t doubt MacLaren-Ross on couch would have delighted many a Freudian voyeur, yet I don’t doubt so, too, would any of the other legion of his fellow Soho boozing pals.
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