James Moffat (27 January 1922 – 8 November 1993) was a Canadian-born British writer who wrote at least 290 novels in several genres under at least 45 pseudonyms". Moffat produced many pulp novels for the United Kingdom publishing house New English Library during the 1970s. Moffat's pen names included Richard Allen, Etienne Aubin (''The Terror of the Seven Crypts'') and Trudi Maxwell (''Diary of A Female Wrestler''). Moffat's pulp novels mostly focused on youth

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...

s of the late 1960s and 1970s, such as skinheads,

hippies A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

and bikers. In particular Moffat wrote a series of popular and commercially successful books featuring what came to be known as his most famous protagonist, the skinhead antihero Joe Hawkins. Moffat often expressed admiration for his subject matter and commented on social issues, mostly from a right-wing perspective. The collected works of Richard Allen were reissued in a six-volume set by ST Publishing in the 1990s. A BBC TV documentary about his life, ''Skinhead Farewell'', aired in 1996. Allen's formulaic and sensationalist writing style has been imitated by

Neoist Neoism is a parodistic -ism. It refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists, and, more generally, to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collectively shared pseudonyms and id ...

writer Stewart Home. Mark Sargeant wrote a feature in ''Scootering Magazine'' titled ''The Richard Allen Legacy''. An interview titled ''The Return of Joe Hawkins'' with publisher George Marshall was in issue seven of ''Skinhead Times'' (1992). Under his own name Moffat wrote at least two science fiction novels: ''The Sleeping Bomb'' (New English Library, 1970; US edition 1973, ''The Cambri Plot'') and a ''Queen Kong'' (1977) a movie tie-in to the low-budget 1976 movie of that name.

Books written as Richard Allen

;Skinhead series New English Library published 18 Skinhead novels by Richard Allen. * ''Skinhead'' (June 1970) * ''Suedehead'' (1971) * ''Demo'' (1971) * ''Boot Boys'' (1972) * ''Skinhead Escapes'' (1972) * ''Skinhead Girls'' (1972) * ''Glam'' (1973) * ''Smoothies'' (1973) * ''Sorts'' (1973) * ''Teeny Bopper Idol'' (1973) * ''Top Gear Skin'' (1973) * ''Trouble for Skinhead'' (1973) * ''Skinhead Farewell'' (1974) * ''Dragon Skins'' (1975) * ''Terrace Terrors'' (1975) * ''Knuckle Girls'' (1977) * ''Punk Rock'' (1977) * ''Mod Rule'' (1980)

References

External links

The Richard Allen Project

* ttp://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/canuck.html Johnny Canuckat Thrilling Detective
Silas Manners Spy Fiction
at Spy Guys and Gals
Virginia Box Spy Fiction
at Spy Guys and Gals * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moffat, James 1922 births 1993 deaths British male novelists British spy fiction writers Canadian emigrants to the United Kingdom Pulp fiction writers Skinhead 20th-century British novelists Canadian expatriate writers