The Art of the Schemer: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Masterpiece Returns
Baron Corvo, Oxford, 1907
Begging, scamming and threatening: they’re all tools of the writer’s trade in Pamela Hansford Johnson’s dark comedy.
By Malcolm Forbes
Originally published in The Wall Street Journal on Jan 2, 2026
Good things come to those who wait. Originally published in 1959 and criminally out of print in the U.S. for years, this masterpiece from the English writer Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-81) makes a welcome return. Supposedly written in three weeks, “The Unspeakable Skipton” doesn’t feel like a rush job. Instead, it has all the hallmarks of both a black comedy comprising carefully crafted scenes and a deft character study made up of painstakingly applied warts-and-all detail.
The eponymous Skipton is an English writer struggling to make ends meet in Bruges, Belgium. On his 50th birthday he writes to his London publisher, insulting his appearance and mocking his miserly advance. To stay afloat while completing his third novel, Skipton also reviews books for a local paper and sends begging, and increasingly threatening, letters to a wealthy relative. An opportunity arises to boost his meager finances when he acts as a guide to a group of English-speaking tourists who are keen to see the “seamy side” of the city. After overcharging them on a visit to a tawdry sex show, Skipton continues his scam taking a man of “rackety tastes” to a brothel. But when tragic circumstances cut short his money-making scheme, Skipton tries to sell dubious art to an equally suspect Italian count. Can Skipton, whose “life had been one long process of overcoming,” come out on top?
Johnson’s narrative is enlivened by its colorful cast, particularly the exuberant, and possibly fraudulent, Conte Querini of Venice, and the imperious and pretentious playwright Dorothy Merlin. The book is powered, however, by its vividly drawn antihero. Skipton’s devious ruses and desperate escapades prove diverting. He amuses with his vicious thoughts and diatribes as well as his brutal depictions of those who have wronged him. He believes his book will be “the greatest novel in the English language.” When finished, it will secure his reputation and bring him glory and riches, “the joy of lordliness, the majesty of the peaceful mind in the well-fed body.”
We could have been repelled by Skipton. He is a swindler, a snob and a savage misanthrope. But he is also so paranoid, deluded and consumed with self-loathing that throughout this caustically witty novel we can’t help but root for him every step of the way.
Mr. Forbes’s work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere.
This review appeared in the January 3, 2026, print edition of The Wall Street Journal as 'The Art Of the Schemer'.