Cork Street, Next to the Hatter's - Tapa blanda

Cork Street, Next To The Hatter's is part of Pamela Hansford Johnson's 'Dorothy Merlin Trilogy', along with The Unspeakable Skipton and Night and Silence, Who Is Here? Described as 'A novel in bad taste', the story follows a reluctant don, Tom Hariot, taken to the theatre by Cosmo Hines, husband to the once-notorious Dorothy, to see the latest and least lovely in the current wave of plays.

Appalled, Tom's surprising reaction is to devote himself to the academic exercise of writing a play of such unparalleled obscenity and sadism that no manager or theatre would dare or wish to present. Innocent that he is, he thinks there can be a limit and strives to be the one that defines it.

Pamela Hansford Johnson was born in 1912 and gained recognition with her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, published in 1935. She wrote 27 novels. Her themes centred on the moral responsibility of the individual in their personal and social relations. The fictional genres she used ranged from romantic comedy (Night and Silence, Who Is Here?) and high comedy (The Unspeakable Skipton) to tragedy (The Holiday Friend) and the psychological study of cruelty (An Error of Judgement). Her last novel, A Bonfire, was published in the year of her death, 1981.

She was a critic as well as a novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy Compton-Burnett; Six Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her reputation as a leading Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play, Corinth House (1954), a work of social criticism arising out of the Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967), and a book of essays, Important to Me (1974). She received honorary degrees from six universities and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was awarded the C.B.E. in 1975.

Pamela Hansford Johnson, who had two children by her first marriage with journalist Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow. Their son Philip was born in 1952.