Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky - Patrick Hamilton

Author: Patrick Hamilton

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published: 1935

Setting: London, UK
Read in November 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.0

My Waterstones Review

This is a trilogy of novels written over a 5 year period between 1929 and 1934 under the backdrop of The Great Depression and initially published separately. These are the stories of three principal characters who stem from a pub in the Euston Road which is the title of the first book.

The Midnight Bell

Bob's story is that of a young bar waiter and is semi-autobiographical. Patrick's descriptive style transports you back in time and places you as an anonymous observer inside The Midnight Bell. Jenny, a prostitute, the character in The Siege of Pleasure, enters with her friend under the watchful eye of Ella, the barmaid, and main character in The Plains of Cement. Ella is secretly in love with Bob, but in The Midnight Bell it is the improbable love story of Bob and the beautiful Jenny that is told. Bob is a warm and too trusting character with a growing mission to turn Jenny, but this is not love as we would recognise today, but an infatuation that renders Bob blind to the deceit he is being subjected to. But Jenny must earn her living, she must survive and pay her bills, is it really a game she is playing with Bob?

The Siege of Pleasure

Jenny's story is cast as a servant to two old ladies and an aged brother, a former doctor in Patrick's home town of Chiswick who quickly becomes the ladies Treasure. Her moral story is about the evils of port, flash young gentleman and the lure of a life beyond her station. The shortest of the trilogy at little more than a hundred pages we might perhaps have guessed her destiny but there is always the hope that she will be saved along the way.

The Plains of Cement

Patrick describes Ella as having a good figure, neatly but plainly dressed with hair 'in the fashion', a plain girl and disinherited from the privileges and delights of other girls and women. Her 28 years has been a difficult life, full of ups and downs, when in walks the affluent and ridiculous Mr Ernest Eccles from Pimlico, 20 years her senior, with new hat, visiting card and an eye for the barmaid of The Midnight Bell. It is early Autumn and with Bob acting mysterious Ella succumbs to a trip to the theatre with Mr Eccles. The ever optimist Ella's moon is on the rise and there may be multiple opportunities to change her life, but as Christmas approaches will Bob miss his chance?


This trilogy is a study of social history, of ordinary lives pitched between the two world wars with little but survival to look forward to. It is a beautifully written book with plenty of comic turns, and likely accurate to the bleak atmosphere of those times.

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99