DURHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2000

 

JAKE ARNOTT

Jake Arnott left school at sixteen. He has since worked as a labourer, a mortuary technician, a theatrical agent’s assistant, an artist’s life model, an actor and a sign language interpreter.

During the eighties he lived in various squats in London. In 1989 he moved to Leeds to work for Red Ladder, the radical theatre company. After a national tour with them he began to write, supporting himself on a part time job with Leeds Social Services as resource centre worker.

Jake Arnott now lives in London. The Long Firm is his first novel. He is currently working on a second, He Kills Coppers, another crime epic set amidst London’s highlife and lowlife.

In The Long Firm Jake Arnott has created the ultimate story of sixties London and truly unforgettableantihero, the gangster, Harry Starks - club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and keen Judy Garland fan. Mixing fictional creations with the famous faces of the Sixties The Long Firm subverts the notion of the sixties as an era of social revolution, permissiveness and ‘swinging London’. Amidst this era of economic boom and liberal consensus lurked the Krays, the Richardsons, the Dirty Squad porn rackets. With friends in high places, showbiz contacts, legitimate business fronts, gangland existed within, not outside of, society. Its style, the suits, the clubs, the ‘faces’, formed as much of the aesthetic of that time as did pop culture. Five characters chart the rise, fall and eventual escape of Harry Starks. Their voices provide compelling testimony to a spectacular life.

‘Truly fascinating…Arnotts ability to powerfully resurrect an era is astonishing. A great read’ The Guardian

‘Very funny, oddly touching and unobtrusively perceptive….I enjoyed it considerably more than ‘Hannibal’ The Evening Standard

‘Cool, stylish and venomous…one of the smartest, funniest and original novels you will read all year’ Independent on Sunday