The Quest For Julian – The Life and Times Of Julian Maclaren-Ross

Julian Maclaren-Ross was a literary prodigy of his time, but has been judged, so far, as having left behind a legacy of unfulfilled promise. He shares with Evelyn Waugh the distinction of having written the best stories of British Army life in the Second World War. He did not write just well, he wrote stylishly, and managed to construct his observations into an expressive literary form, which reflected not only his compassion, but also his sense of humour and of the ironic. He was one of the best-read professional writers and critics of his time and, with another contemporary novelist, until recently also neglected, Henry Green, in the avant-garde of British writers, and among the first to identify the ‘proletarian school of writing’. He used this term in a lengthy review of the works of Henry Green, entitled A Poet of Fear, in the Christmas number of the TLS in 1948. Green and Julian were among the first professional writers to write about ordinary people, and were the precursors of Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, David Storey, and the other ‘proletarian’ writers, and “Angry Young Men” of the 1950s and after. Unlike Waugh and Green, Julian did not produce a body of major novels to ensure his position in the literary firmament, but, as was the case with Cyril Connolly who discovered him, the judgment of ‘unfulfilled promise’ is not accurate for, like Connolly’s, his contribution to English literature was substantial. It is possible that his wide reading and acute critical faculty, may have inhibited his ability to develop his own fictional writing as, like Cyril Connolly, he was always busy reading, and writing about, the latest creative literature