Paul J Willett

American Film: An A-Z Guide (Watts Reference)

North Soho 999: A True Story of Gangs and Gun-Crime in 1940s London

"North Soho 999" is a surprisingly topical non-fiction account of the murder that came to symbolise the crimewave threatening to overwhelm post-war London. Set in bomb-scarred London in 1947, it is the untold story of a Soho robbery and shooting carried out by a 17 year-old and his two young accompl...

Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: The Bizarre Life of Julian Maclaren-Ross

No writer, not even Hemingway or Rimbaud, led as bizarre and eventful a life as the once celebrated Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64). Next to him, the conventional icons of London bohemia, among them Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard, appear models of stability and self-restraint.

Selected Stories

November 2004 is the 40th anniversary of Maclaren-Ross's premature death, hastened by drug and alcohol abuse. A significant number of features and articles are planned in the national press throughout November. Maclaren-Ross's wild, bohemian life makes him a counterpart to hard-living American write...

Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond

In the heyday of his sleaze empire, with his pencil moustache, gold jewellery and trademark fur coat, Paul Raymond was for many people the brash personification of nouveau riche vulgarity, posing proudly beside his customised Rolls Royce, a fat cigar protruding from his lips, a curvaceous showgirl o...

Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms: The Spy, the Lover and the Man Called 'M'

Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms by Paul Willetts - a non-fiction thriller about one of the most explosive espionage operations of the Second World War. Set in blacked-out London during the ominous lull before the Blitz, this true story centres on Tyler Kent, a debonair encryption specialist at t...