A talented off-beat journalist and social observer, Colin MacInnes is best known for his trilogy of London novels which includes Absolute Beginners as well as City of Spades and Mr Love and Justice. He also wrote about the allied occupation of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, in June in Her Spring and England, Half English. Colin MacInnes’ essays were published in Out of the Way, in 1980 and a selection of the best of his fiction and journalism is available in Absolute MacInnes, edited by Tony Gould. MacInnes died of cancer in 1976.