When Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon magazine first read this story in 1940 he was struck by the opening sentence: “Absolute fact, I knew fuck all about it.” This would appear in print as the milder profanity ‘damn all.’ (Issue 6, June 1940) Connolly, impressed by the authentic tone and detail of the story assumed that that the author had spent time in India and was astonished to discover on meeting him that this wasn’t the case. Maclaren-Ross was a threadbare bohemian, barely keeping afloat in a world of booze, bailiffs and benzedrine… He was also among the very best writers of the 1940s, much admired by better-known contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. When the latter praised him as ‘a writer’s writer’ Maclaren-Ross gloomily responded: “No. I’m a writer’s writer’s writer.”

In this debut story Adams, an army officer back in Britain after serving in colonial India, describes his involvement in a hit-and-run accident and the ensuing red tape, bribery, obfuscation and trial. His first-person narrative — gruff, entitled, rather stupid but supremely confident — is utterly convincing, and an impressive act of mimesis. Adams is wholly oblivious to the consequences of his actions and entirely callous in his complete lack of remorse. His breezy account offers an unwittingly ferocious critique of colonial rule and a powerful indictment of injustice.

First published in Horizon, June 1940, and collected in Better Than a Kick in the Pants; Short Stories by J. Maclaren Ross, Lawson & Dunn, 1945, and in Memoirs of the Forties, Cardinal, 1991, which is warmly recommended