Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott (born 11 March 1961) is a British novelist and dramatist, author of ''The Long Firm'' (1999) and six other novels.

Life

Arnott was born in Buckinghamshire, England. Having left Aylesbury Grammar School at the age of 17, he had various jobs including as labourer, mortuary technician, artist's model, theatrical agency assistant, and actor both with the Red Ladder Theatre Company in Leeds and appearing as a mummy in the 1999 film '' The Mummy''. He lived in squats such as Bonnington Square in south London, and came out as bisexual in his twenties. In 2005, Arnott was ranked one of Britain's 100 most influential LGBT people.

Works

All of the novels by Arnott are engaged in the excavation of secret histories in the teasing out and restoration of events that have taken place beneath the surface of society.
* ''The Long Firm'' (1999) tells of Harry Starks, a homosexual East End gangster in the 1960s. It includes references to many real-life characters of the time, including the Kray twins, Tom Driberg, and Judy Garland. A notable feature is that the story is told from five different points of view. Upon release, ''The Long Firm'' was generally well-received among British press. ''The Guardian'' gave the novel an average rating of 8.8 out of 10 based on reviews from multiple British newspapers. Globally, it was generally well-received with '' Complete Review'' saying on the consensus "Dumbfoundingly enthusiastic, with only the slightest qualms about style and violence". It was adapted as a BBC 2 TV series starring Derek Jacobi, Phil Daniels and Mark Strong, broadcast in July 2004 and nominated for six BAFTA Awards, winning two.
* ''He Kills Coppers'' (2001) tells of a criminal on the run, based on real-life cop killer Harry Roberts, the tale starting in 1966, the year of England's World Cup triumph, through to the Margaret Thatcher era, the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s and the Poll Tax Riots. Upon release, ''He Kills Coppers'' was generally well-received among British press. ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported on reviews from several publications with a rating scale for the novel out of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish": ''Daily Telegraph'', '' Independent On Sunday'', and '' Literary Review'' reviews under "Love It" and ''Sunday Times'' and ''New Statesman'' reviews under "Pretty Good" and '' Guardian'' and '' TLS'' reviews under "Ok". It was later adapted for television, appearing on ITV1 in the UK in March and April 2008.
* ''truecrime'' (2003) takes up the story of a gangster found dead at Starks's Spanish villa at the end of ''The Long Firm''. The dead man's daughter wants to flush out Harry Starks, whom she suspects of the murder. She is an actress and uses the making of a film about old time British gangsters as a means of tempting his appearance. Upon release, ''truecrime'' was generally well-received among British press. ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported on reviews from several publications with a rating scale for the novel out of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish": ''Daily Telegraph'' and '' Guardian'' reviews under "Love It" and '' Sunday Telegraph'' and ''New Statesman'' reviews under "Pretty Good" and '' Times'', ''Independent'', and '' Observer'' reviews under "Ok" and ''Sunday Times'' review under "Rubbish".
* ''Johnny Come Home'' (2006) shifts from a focus on the criminal underworld to the early 1970s with a plot involving The Angry Brigade and a glam rock star inspired by Gary Glitter. ''Johnny Come Home'' had been withdrawn from sale in the UK due to the presence of a villainous former bandleader named Tony Rocco; there is a real former bandleader of that name, who objected to the character's name. The book has now been reissued with the character's name changed to Timothy Royal.
* ''The Devil's Paintbrush'' (2009) is set in Paris, France, in 1903, and deals with an encounter between disgraced homosexual former British Army officer Sir Hector MacDonald and the occultist Aleister Crowley.
* ''The House of Rumour'' (2012) is set in London, Southern California and Munich during the Second World War and its aftermath. An American SF writer founds a new religion, a rocket scientist dabbles in the black arts and Rudolf Hess makes his dramatic night flight to Scotland after consulting astrologists. Described by the critic Mark Lawson as "A conspiracy thriller filled with bewildering connections, dark conjecture and arcane information, ''The House of Rumour'' perhaps most resembles ''The Da Vinci Code'', rewritten by an author with the gifts of characterisation, wit and literacy."
* ''Doctor Who: A Handful of Stardust'' (2014) features the sixth incarnation of the Doctor from the popular TV Sci-Fi Series. It was released as part of the "Time Trips" range, which featured works by authors who have never written for the character before.
* ''The Visa Affair'' (2016), commissioned radio play for BBC Radio 3 in October 2016. The story of how Joe Orton struggled to get a US visa to visit the Broadway production of his play '' Entertaining Mr Sloane'' in 1965.
* ''The Fatal Tree'' (2017) is set in 18th-century London and follows stories that relate to "The Fatal Tree" i.e. the gallows at Tyburn. ''The Guardian'' called it a "Colourful descent into the underworld...absolutely gripping". According to an interview in the Scottish '' Sunday Herald'', "Arnott originally pitched the book as "''Moll Flanders'' meets ''A Clockwork Orange''", owing to its significant use of 18th-century London street slang. The ''Evening Standard'' described it as "a phantasmagoric walk on the Wild side".

Biblio

Novels

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Media tie-ins

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References

External links

Biography
on Contemporary Writers

article on Arnott
– Big Gay Read

"Arnott swaps slammer for glamour"
– BBC News, 4 August 2006


on ''Keeper of the Snails'', October 2005

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arnott, Jake
1961 births
Living people
20th-century squatters
21st-century English male writers
21st-century English novelists
Bisexual male writers
Bisexual novelists
British bisexual men
English bisexual writers
English crime fiction writers
English LGBTQ novelists
English male novelists
People educated at Aylesbury Grammar School
Writers from Buckinghamshire