SOURCE: Williams, Hugo. “Freelance.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4960 (24 April 1998): 16.

In the following essay, Williams offers his own personal reminiscences of working with Hamilton on the New Review during the 1970s. Williams comments on the parallels between the life of Matthew Arnold, as described in Hamilton's A Gift Imprisoned, and Hamilton's own life.

The 1970s is my lost decade, the era before I started keeping albums and having regular money. One of the things I do know about it is that I worked for a while for Ian Hamilton on the New Review, a high-profile monthly literary magazine which took over the Soho building, 11 Greek Street, where his previous magazine, The Review, had once had a floor. Soho was a very different place in those days—rougher, darker, seedier and obviously cheaper. In the hot summer of 1976, the streets were full of strippers darting from one club to another...