Excerpt from Bohemia in London

When authors are honest to themselves, they admit that their books are failures, in that they are never quite what they wished to make them. A book has a wilful way of its own, as soon as it is fairly started, and somehow has a knack of cheating its writer out of itself and changing into something different. It is usually a reversal of the story of "Beauty and the Beast." The odious beast does not become a prince, but a wonderful, clear, brilliant-coloured dream (as all books are before they are written) turns in the very hands of its author into a monster that he does not recognise.

I wanted to write a book that would make real on paper the strange, tense, joyful and despairing, hopeful and sordid life that is lived in London by young artists and writers. I wanted to present life in London as it touches the people who come here, like Whittingtons, to seek the gold of fame on London pavements.

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