Roland Camberton's Disappearing Act

Roland Camberton (1921-65)  was born in Manchester, England as Henry Cohen, and was educated in Hackney, London. He published two novels: Scamp (1950), which is set in grim Soho and Bloomsbury of the 1940s, and Rain on the Pavements (1951), set in Jewish Hackney in the 1930s. After that he disappeared without apparent trace, but Iain Sinclair has spent 30 years discovering what became of him, and one of his findings involves Camberton  meeting William Burroughs once.

New London Editions, an imprint of Five Leaves Publishing, re-published both books last summer, and Scamp includes an Introduction by Sinclair. Both editions use the original illustrations by John Minton.

The story of Sinclair's search - published in the Guardian 30 August 2008 - is here.