ABSTRACT
In 1957, the publisher Tom Maschler (1933-) edited a volume of essays entitled Declaration—a symposium containing the credos of eight so-called “Angry Young Men”. In his introduction, Maschler wrote:
We have to thank an even lower level of journalism for the phrase “Angry Young Men” which has been employed to group, without so much as an attempt at understanding, all those sharing a certain indignation against the apathy, the complacency, the idealistic bankruptcy of their environment. … To be prejudiced against them purely because they are angry is to imagine that anger is the sole substance of their work. … It is important to note that although most of the contributors to this volume have at some time been termed Angry Young Men they do not belong to a united movement. Far from it; they attack one another directly or indirectly in these pages. Some were even reluctant to appear between the same covers with others whose views they violently oppose.
(Maschler, 1957, pp. 7–8) 2But three contributors did, at least, have something in common: Colin Wilson, Bill Hopkins, and Stuart Holroyd. They were friends and, at that time, all rented rooms in a kind of writers’ commune at a house in Chepstow Road, London (Upon leaving the premises in 1960, Hopkins commissioned his friend Laurence Bradshaw to sculpt a blue plaque which was fixed to the outside wall near the front door. It read: “In this house lived, 1955–1960, Colin Wilson, John Braine, Stuart Holroyd, Tom Greenwell, Greta Detloff, Bill Hopkins. Hallowed be these precincts.” This was taken down soon afterwards and nothing is now known of its whereabouts).