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Patrick Hamilton: Rope, Gaslight, Hangover Square and More: Seven BBC Radio Full-Cast Productions
A collection of thrilling radio dramas from the celebrated novelist and playwright
Patrick Hamilton is renowned for his gritty, slice-of-life tales chronicling the hopes, dreams and obsessions of London's working class in the inter-war years. This collection brings together his key pieces, together with some lesser-known classics and a bonus 2004 documentary exploring his achievements and legacy.
Hangover Square - Earl's Court, 1939. With war looming, everyone is frantically pursuing a good time. But when composer George Bone becomes obsessed with beautiful, fast-living actress Netta, murder and madness ensue... This brooding adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's masterpiece stars Nicholas Farrell and Amanda Redman.
Rope - Believing they have committed the perfect murder, two students throw a macabre dinner party, where the guests include the victim's father. Will anyone see through their terrible vanity? Alan Rickman and Adam Baring star in this electrifying drama, famously adapted as an Alfred Hitchcock film.
Gaslight - A husband commits to driving his wealthy young wife insane in order to steal from her in this psychological drama which originated the term 'gaslighting'. Starring Barbara Jefford and Michael Kilgarriff.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky - Patrick Hamilton's semi-autobiographical trilogy tells a story of unrequited love amid the hardship of 1920s London, and comprises The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement. Steven Pacey, Annette Badland, John Moffatt and Emily Morgan star.
The Governess - Ethel Fry takes a position as a governess in the Drew household, but when the family discovers their baby son has been abducted, the entire house is thrown under suspicion. Starring Margaret Wolfit and Helen Worth
To The Public Danger - A young couple fall into the company of two reckless motorists, whose drunk-driving has fatal consequences. Ivan Samson and Arthur Young star.
The Duke in Darkness - Set in the Chateau Lamorre during the 16th-century French Civil Wars, this stirring tale of imprisonment and escape stars Alec Clunes and John Moffatt.
A Portrait in Black - Biographer Nigel Jones celebrates the centenary of Hamilton's birth and his skill at conjuring up a lost world of seedy boarding-houses, third-class railway compartments, dance halls and fleapit cinemas.
Text copyright Patrick Hamilton 1929 (Rope), 1935 (Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky), 1938 (Gas Light), 1939 (To the Public Danger), 1941 (Hangover Square), 1943 (The Duke in Darkness), 1946 (The Governess)
Cast and credits
Written by Patrick Hamilton
Hangover Square
Rope
Gaslight
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
The Governess
To The Public Danger
The Duke in Darkness
Extra
A Portrait in Black
Patrick Hamilton is renowned for his gritty, slice-of-life tales chronicling the hopes, dreams and obsessions of London's working class in the inter-war years. This collection brings together his key pieces, together with some lesser-known classics and a bonus 2004 documentary exploring his achievements and legacy.
Hangover Square - Earl's Court, 1939. With war looming, everyone is frantically pursuing a good time. But when composer George Bone becomes obsessed with beautiful, fast-living actress Netta, murder and madness ensue... This brooding adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's masterpiece stars Nicholas Farrell and Amanda Redman.
Rope - Believing they have committed the perfect murder, two students throw a macabre dinner party, where the guests include the victim's father. Will anyone see through their terrible vanity? Alan Rickman and Adam Baring star in this electrifying drama, famously adapted as an Alfred Hitchcock film.
Gaslight - A husband commits to driving his wealthy young wife insane in order to steal from her in this psychological drama which originated the term 'gaslighting'. Starring Barbara Jefford and Michael Kilgarriff.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky - Patrick Hamilton's semi-autobiographical trilogy tells a story of unrequited love amid the hardship of 1920s London, and comprises The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement. Steven Pacey, Annette Badland, John Moffatt and Emily Morgan star.
The Governess - Ethel Fry takes a position as a governess in the Drew household, but when the family discovers their baby son has been abducted, the entire house is thrown under suspicion. Starring Margaret Wolfit and Helen Worth
To The Public Danger - A young couple fall into the company of two reckless motorists, whose drunk-driving has fatal consequences. Ivan Samson and Arthur Young star.
The Duke in Darkness - Set in the Chateau Lamorre during the 16th-century French Civil Wars, this stirring tale of imprisonment and escape stars Alec Clunes and John Moffatt.
A Portrait in Black - Biographer Nigel Jones celebrates the centenary of Hamilton's birth and his skill at conjuring up a lost world of seedy boarding-houses, third-class railway compartments, dance halls and fleapit cinemas.
Text copyright Patrick Hamilton 1929 (Rope), 1935 (Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky), 1938 (Gas Light), 1939 (To the Public Danger), 1941 (Hangover Square), 1943 (The Duke in Darkness), 1946 (The Governess)
Cast and credits
Written by Patrick Hamilton
Hangover Square
Rope
Gaslight
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
The Governess
To The Public Danger
The Duke in Darkness
Extra
A Portrait in Black
Audible Audio
Published May 11, 2023
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About the author
Patrick Hamilton
88 books288 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in the Sussex village of 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 in Chiswick and Hove. 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 in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).
The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute, and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1935).
Hamilton disliked many aspects of modern life. He was disfigured badly when he was run over by a car in the late 1920s: the end of his novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), with its vision of England smothered in metal beetles, reflects his loathing of the motor car. However, despite some distaste for the culture in which he operated, he was a popular contributor to it. His two most successful plays, Rope and Gas Light (1938, known as Angel Street in the US), made Hamilton wealthy and were also successful as films: the British-made Gaslight (1940) and the 1944 American remake, and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948).
Hangover Square (1941) is often judged his most accomplished work and still sells well in paperback, and is regarded by contemporary authors such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd as an important part of the tradition of London novels. Set in Earls Court where Hamilton himself lived, it deals with both alcohol-drinking practices of the time and the underlying political context, such as the rise of fascism and responses to it. Hamilton became an avowed Marxist, though not a publicly declared member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1930s, like many other authors, Hamilton grew increasingly angry with capitalism and, again like others, felt that the violence and fascism of Europe during the period indicated that capitalism was reaching its end: this encouraged his Marxism and his novel Impromptu in Moribundia (1939) was a satirical attack of capitalist culture.
During his later life, Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed. The Slaves of Solitude (1947), was his only work to deal directly with the Second World War, and he preferred to look back to the pre-war years. His Gorse Trilogy—three novels about a devious sexual predator and conman—are not generally well thought of critically, although Graham Greene said that the first was 'the best book written about Brighton' and the second (Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse) is regarded increasingly as a comic masterpiece. The hostility and negativity of the novels is also attributed to Hamilton's disenchantment with the utopianism of Marxism and depression. The trilogy comprises The West Pier (1952); Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), dramatized as The Charmer in 1987; and in 1955 Hamilton's last published work, Unknown Assailant, a short novel much of which was dictated while Hamilton was drunk. The Gorse Trilogy was first published in a single volume in 1992.
Hamilton had begun to consume alcohol excessively while still a relatively young man. After a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, in Sheringham, Norfolk.
He was born Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton in the Sussex village of 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 in Chiswick and Hove. 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 in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).
The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute, and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1935).
Hamilton disliked many aspects of modern life. He was disfigured badly when he was run over by a car in the late 1920s: the end of his novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), with its vision of England smothered in metal beetles, reflects his loathing of the motor car. However, despite some distaste for the culture in which he operated, he was a popular contributor to it. His two most successful plays, Rope and Gas Light (1938, known as Angel Street in the US), made Hamilton wealthy and were also successful as films: the British-made Gaslight (1940) and the 1944 American remake, and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948).
Hangover Square (1941) is often judged his most accomplished work and still sells well in paperback, and is regarded by contemporary authors such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd as an important part of the tradition of London novels. Set in Earls Court where Hamilton himself lived, it deals with both alcohol-drinking practices of the time and the underlying political context, such as the rise of fascism and responses to it. Hamilton became an avowed Marxist, though not a publicly declared member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1930s, like many other authors, Hamilton grew increasingly angry with capitalism and, again like others, felt that the violence and fascism of Europe during the period indicated that capitalism was reaching its end: this encouraged his Marxism and his novel Impromptu in Moribundia (1939) was a satirical attack of capitalist culture.
During his later life, Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed. The Slaves of Solitude (1947), was his only work to deal directly with the Second World War, and he preferred to look back to the pre-war years. His Gorse Trilogy—three novels about a devious sexual predator and conman—are not generally well thought of critically, although Graham Greene said that the first was 'the best book written about Brighton' and the second (Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse) is regarded increasingly as a comic masterpiece. The hostility and negativity of the novels is also attributed to Hamilton's disenchantment with the utopianism of Marxism and depression. The trilogy comprises The West Pier (1952); Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953), dramatized as The Charmer in 1987; and in 1955 Hamilton's last published work, Unknown Assailant, a short novel much of which was dictated while Hamilton was drunk. The Gorse Trilogy was first published in a single volume in 1992.
Hamilton had begun to consume alcohol excessively while still a relatively young man. After a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, in Sheringham, Norfolk.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 13, 2025
I only read Gaslight but STILL! So good! Would love to see it live someday.
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