Thursday 27 October 2016

London After Dark




Here is a small collection of eight vintage paperback books depicting London, or a district of London, in their titles and on their illustrated and photographic covers. Sensationalist snapshots and escapist fiction, lurid, exciting and cheap...

Published originally as 'The Stars are Dark' in 1943, this is the American edition of the tale of the British Secret Service, the spies and the counter spies....
Formerly known as 'The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal' when it first came out in 1934, this paperback version dates from 1963 

Want a little ZIP in your TRIP? asks the blurb on the back cover. "It's easy in London if you know the 'right' people who swing in the 'wrong' places"

She claims she started the permissive society! The full story of London's beautiful, turned-on people. It's the 1973 NEL paperback release of the '71 original. 

The legendary film director Sam Fuller's investigation into the life and times of the most famous squat in London at the turn of the 1970s

"the twilight world of the under-privileged...touches the depths of squalor and degradation". And all for five bob.

It's 1954, and here's the "The Murky Side of London...hitherto unpublished facts about dope, prostitution and blackmail". This edition was published by Panther Books in 1959.

"in these six stories about London's teenagers from Asian families Farrukh Dhondy describes, through the teenagers' own eyes, their life in Britain today" (well 1976 to be exact)