Adrift in Soho (1961), Colin Wilson’s second novel, is an engaging, often very funny existential picaresque tale which evokes bohemian life in 1950s London while also questioning the kind of freedom it represents. By Wilson’s own account, Adrift began as “a collaboration with an old Soho friend”, an actor called Charles Belchier (the original of Charles Compton Street in the novel). After the success of Wilson’s Outsider (1956), Belchier had asked for his help in finding a publisher for an unfinished autobiographical work called The Other Side of the Town. Wilson found this a fascinating fragment but judged it unpublishable because of its shortness and lack of development. …
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