Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962) was an English playwright and novelist. He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in Hassocks, near Brighton, to writer parents. Due to his father’s alcoholism and financial ineptitude, the family spent much of Hamilton’s childhood living in boarding houses. His education was patchy, and ended just after his fifteenth birthday when his mother withdrew him from Westminster School. After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist with the publication of Monday Morning, written when he was nineteen. His first real success came several years later with his play Rope, later made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. His novel Hangover Square, published in 1941, is often judged his most accomplished work and still sells well today. Hamilton drank excessively. He died of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure in 1962. |
