Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia

Book excerpt: Born in London in 1912, the youngest child of a Cuban father and an Anglo-Indian mother, Julian Maclaren-Ross led a bizarre and chaotic life, living at one time or another as a vacuuum-cleaner salesman, an author, screenwriter, army deserter, alcoholic, drug-addict, stalker and Soho stalwart. Since his death, his place in literary history has been secured by the acclaimed posthumous publication of Memoirs of the Forties, and he has been memorialised as X. Trapnel in Anthony Powell's celebrated A Dance to the Music of Time. This is his first full and authorised biography.