Jumpin' Jack Flash :David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld
Jumpin' Jack Flash :David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld
paperback
Published:
26 January, 2017
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Description
'REVELATORY' - DAILY TELEGRAPH *****
'FASCINATING' - OBSERVER
'ENGROSSING' - DAILY MAIL
'You’ll worry at your hunger to keep on reading, but you won’t be able to stop' - GUARDIAN, Book of the Year
David Litvinoff was one of the great mythic characters of ‘60s London.
Flitting between the worlds of music, art and crime, he exerted a hidden influence that helped create the Krays twins’ legend, connected the Rolling Stones with London’s dark side, shaped the plot of classic film Performance – and saw him immortalised in a portrait by Lucian Freud.
Litvinoff’s determination to live without trace means that his life has always eluded biographers, until now. Intent on unravelling the enigma of Litvinoff, Keiron Pim conducted 100 interviews over five years, speaking to Eric Clapton and Marianne Faithfull, James Fox and ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. The result is an extraordinary feat of research that traces a rogue’s progress amongst aristocrats, gangsters and rock stars.
Prizes
Short-listed for Wales Book of the Year 2017 (UK),Long-listed for Gordon Burn Prize 2016 (UK)
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780099584445 |
| ISBN10 | 0099584441 |
| Number Of Pages | 432 |
| Item Weight | 302 g |
| Product Dimensions | 130 x 197 x 28 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Vintage Publishing |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
You’ll worry at your hunger to keep on reading, but you won’t be able to stop. * Guardian, Book of the Year *
The rock'n'roll legend of David Litvinoff is given its definitive account. A considerable work of detection and human sympathy unpicking old myths and making them new. -- Iain Sinclair
This surely has the most startling beginning of any biography to be published this year… Vivid, engrossing… Pim gives an all too graphic picture of the seedy 1950s… He is compassionate and humane at every moment. His prose is always careful and stylish. -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Guardian *
Blending pop culture, social history and interviews with raddled survivors, Pim reconstructs every scene in Litvinoff’s twisted history… Jumpin’ Jack Flash provides the missing piece of Swinging London’s social jigsaw. -- Dominic Green * Literary Review *
Blending pop culture, social history and interviews with raddled survivors, Pim reconstructs every scene in Litvinoff’s twisted history… Jumpin’ Jack Flash provides the missing piece of Swinging London’s social jigsaw. -- Dominic Green * Literary Review *
Fascinating biography… Pim has a thorough knowledge of his subject and his milieu and is painstaking in his research… Against the odds, Keiron Pim has written a very good book about a very bad man. -- David Collard * Times Literary Supplement *
A captivating and prodigiously well-researched account of that legendary 1960s London sub-world where criminality and bohemianism met head-on. -- D. J. Taylor
Pim’s account of this extraordinary character is a magisterial work of scholarship. -- Colin MacCabe * New Statesman *
Revelatory... The impressive list of character references in this extraordinary book gives some indication of just how singular a creature [David Litvinoff] was, and the mind-boggling diversity of the worlds in which he moved. -- Mick Brown * Daily Telegraph *
Keiron Pim has grafted long and hard to separate the facts from the heady fictions… Pim does a great job of bringing the era and some of its most colourful characters to life. -- Chris Maume * Independent *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Keiron Pim is aged 38, married with three young daughters and lives in Norwich, where he was for a decade the literary editor of the Eastern Daily Press newspaper before leaving to concentrate on writing books. He is the author of The Bumper Book of Dinosaurs (Square Peg) and he edited and introduced Into the Light: the Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Meir of Norwich, the first translated edition of England’s only major medieval Hebrew poet.