The Domesday Book

London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961.

First Edition, first impression. Publisher's crimson red boards with the excellent and unclipped dust-jacket. Former owner's unobtrusive name stamp at top corner of first free endpaper and two old Sellotape stains on endpapers, else a clean, sharp and tight copy, with the d-j in superb condition entirely free of tears and nicks. A near fine copy. A collection of short stories. Maclaren-Ross, English writer and dandy, is synonymous with the bohemian world of mid-twentieth-century Soho, where he cavorted with the likes of Dylan Thomas, Quentin Crisp, John Minton, Nina Hamnett, Joan Wyndham, Aleister Crowley, John Deakin, Augustus John, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. His theatrical dress sense - a sharp suit combined with his famous teddy-bear coat, aviator-style dark glasses and cigarette-holder - ensured that he stood out in the pubs and clubs of Fitzrovia and Soho. Intrigued by his stylish get-up and dissolute lifestyle, numerous writers, most notably Anthony Powell and Olivia Manning, used him as the model for characters in their fiction. In the wake of the publication in 2003 of Paul Willetts's Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, the first biography of Maclaren-Ross, there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in both his life and work.