The Unspeakable Skipton

It’s not easy being a genius. Just ask Daniel Skipton, the greatest—or, let us say, the most under-recognized—novelist of his generation. Skipton is only a few revisions away from finishing his masterpiece: a satire of literary London that will humiliate his enemies and make him as famous, and as rich, as he deserves. Yet, in the meantime, he is forced to scrape by in obscurity and self-imposed exile amid the deserted canals of Bruges, barely surviving on a regimen of blackmail, bullying, persistence, and native charm.

One afternoon at a local cafe, he encounters the acclaimed playwright Dorothy Merlin and her entourage—worldly tourists on the lookout for erotic adventure and in need of a local guide. Soon they are joined by an even juicier target, a Venetian count who dreams of singing on the English stage and who will spend anything to make his dream come true. Or so he leads Skipton to believe.

Too long out of print in the U.S., Pamela Hansford Johnson’s comic masterpiece The Unspeakable Skipton belongs on the shelf beside the best work of Nancy Mitford or Muriel Spark. As Michael Dirda writes in his foreword it is “a dark chocolate treat, deliciously witty and bittersweet.”

“If this is not a great book, then I don't know what greatness is.”

—Edith Sitwell

“A cheerful and amusing book . . . [Johnson’s] wit is astringent, her gaze is clear and unafraid. She does not pose or preach, threaten or demand. Her style is admirably suited to her purpose, forceful, pointed but not vicious. And, having the vision of an artist, she shows us her all-too-human people pursuing their small but absorbing adventures in an enchanted city of bells and flowers and fun.”

—Aileen Pippet, The New York Times

“Witty, satirical and deftly malicious.”

—Anthony Burgess

“This once celebrated writer remains an intriguingly neglected figure . . . The Unspeakable Skipton [is] a maliciously witty account of literary skulduggery and lofty pretensions, set in Johnson’s beloved Bruges . . . [Johnson’s] novels are sharply observed, artfully constructed and always enlivened by the freshness of imagery that derives from her poetic beginnings.”

—Miranda Seymour, Times Literary Supplement

“A remarkable craftswoman.”

—A.S. Byatt

“An extremely funny story of a rotter at large in Bruges.” 

—Tatler

“Her best work . . . Hansford Johnson at her wittiest is Waugh mingled with Malcolm Bradbury. She deserves a revival.” 

—Ruth Rendell, The Sunday Telegraph

“Skipton is a superb comic creation.”

—The New Statesman

“A brilliant and terrifying portrait of an artist whose obsession with his own work has driven him beyond the bounds of reason and sanity.” 

—Venetia Murray, Books and Bookmen

Pamela Hansford Johnson shocked the public at age twenty-three when she published This Bed Thy Centre (1935), a sexually frank novel inspired by her romance with Dylan Thomas. Its success allowed Johnson to quit secretarial work and launch a fulltime literary career. She would publish twenty-six more novels. Although Johnson’s career was overshadowed in her lifetime by that of her second husband, the novelist C.P. Snow, The Unspeakable Skipton (1959) retains a more passionate following than any of her other books, or his.

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and longtime book columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of the memoir, An Open Book, the Edgar Award-winning On Conan Doyle, and five collections of essays and literary entertainments.

The Unspeakable Skipton • Paperback ISBN: 9781961341388

Aug 5, 2025 • McNALLY EDITIONS no. 43

5” x 8.5” • 240 pages • $19.00

eBook ISBN: 9781961341401