The author Adam Diment in 1967 with two lovely ladies. In the distance, at 120 King’s Road is the Thomas Crapper shop. It had just closed down.
The October 1967 edition of Michael Heseltine’s Town magazine featured an interview with the fashionable twenty-three year old author Adam Diment. The introduction said that he was:
“Hoping to move from his Fulham Road flat to trendy King’s Road, where his tight pink trousers and matching floral shirt will be more appreciated.”
In the late sixties moving a few hundred yards from one area of west London to another was like travelling to a different country. Diment knew he could afford the expensive move because after the publication of his first novel The Dolly, Dolly Spy, Diment suddenly became the most talked-about author in town. That year Publishers’ Weekly wrote about the novel:
A kinky, cool mod flare that is outrageously entertaining….If you appreciate clever plotting, plenty of excitement, sex at its most uninhibited, a dollop or two of explicit sadism, Adam Diment is a name to remember.
Except he wasn’t, and Diment is almost totally forgotten about these days. He wrote three more books – The Spying Game and The Dolly, Dolly Birds which were both published in 1968 and a fourth novel Think Inc that was published in 1971. After which, suddenly, he completely disappeared from public view.
His four novels, although entertaining romps through the swinging sixties, are hugely dated these days and are peppered with the era’s casual sexism and racism that make the James Bond novels appear as if they were written by Andrea Dworkin.
“Despite her lovely body it was her face which had me hooked. I do not belong to that philistine philosophy which propounds the ‘put a sack over their heads and they’re all the same’ nonsense. I like to watch something pretty and interesting when collecting my oats, and her face is certainly that. At present she was doing a languorous chameleon change from perplexed to pout.” - The Bang Bang Birds
“She was wearing her latest acquisition, bought in a boutique in King’s Road which is a cross between an Eastern bazaar and a rugger scrum. It was very short and covered with overlapping blue and yellow flowers. Over her heart, which was almost visible because it was as low at the breast as it was short at the thighs, was a bright pink heart…as she was so brown, she had given up wearing stockings. Veronica was about as naked as you can get these days without being nicked for indecency.” - The Dolly, Dolly Spy
The Bang Bang Birds published in 1968
The Dolly, Dolly Spy published in 1967
The books were all thrillers featuring a reluctant spy called Philip McAlpine. The sex-hungry hero was suspiciously similar in appearance to the writer and Diment, it seems, was very happy for this blurred confusion to continue. Especially, the marijuana smoking and the preponderance of girls. Fleet Street seemed genuinely intrigued with the similarity between hero and author and Atticus in the Sunday Times wrote:
Adam Diment is 23; his hero, Philip McAlpine, is based on himself. That is to say he’s tall, good-looking, with a taste for fast cars, planes, girls and pot.
While the Daily Mirror wrote:
McAlpine is the most modern hero in years. He’s hip, he’s hard, he likes birds and, sometimes, marijuana.
Adam Diment smoking a ‘hashish cigarette’.
More hashish with companion Suzie Mandrake in 1967
Adam with the artist Tim Whidborne, Anne McAuley and Victoria Brooke. 1967
Adam “I’ve got my eyes closed I promise” Diment with Tim Whidbourne presumably pretending to paint Suzie Mandrake.
On the inside cover of the 1969 edition of The Bang Bang Birds it says that “At present THE DOLLY DOLLY SPY is being filmed with David Hemmings as Philip McAlpine. A Stanley Canter/Desmond Elliott production for release by United Artists”. It’s worth noting that David Hemmings was at the height of his career at this stage – the premier of Blow Up was in October 1967 and both The Charge of the Light Brigade and Barberella were released in 1968.
The film came to nothing and whether filming ever took place or was halted half way through nobody seems to remember. Although there are pictures of Adam seen with David Hemmings and one of the producers Desmond Elliott.
Adam with David Hemmings in 1967.
Adam with Desmond Elliott and Suzie Mandrake.
Adam Diment published his final novel Think Inc in 1971 and then completely disappeared without trace. Except for one thing. Last year a few documents relating to Adam Diment (F.A. Diment) were released by the National Archives and amongst them were two anonymous letters written in March 1969 to the department of Exchange Control of the Bank of England.
Both the letters seemed to accuse Adam Diment of some kind of currency swindle involving the export of 2400 dollars which had been paid by the film producer Stanley Canter and one letter even mentions that there were suspicions that it may have been some kind of drug-deal.
Whether the currency swindle was anything to do with the non-completion of the film of The Dolly Dolly Spy or was the cause of Diment’s disappearance, there seems to be no clue. One of the letters, however, imparts the important piece of information that Adam Diment, despite telling Town magazine otherwise, never seemed to have made the move to The King’s Road as he was still living in the tight-pink-trousers-fearing Fulham at 28 Tregunter Road.
Adam with Victoria Brooke and a Tiger Moth
Ray Charles – Let’s Go Get Stoned
Muddy Waters – Champagne and Reefer
Another excellent eye-opening entry here. As someone who has a bit of a thing for the 60s I’d never come across this name before. Adam’s story reminds us how “fame” can be so utterly transient. Imagine if they’d had the internet in the 60s! I guess there would be a whole universe of people like Adam Diment twinkling back at us. Susie Mandrake where are you now?
This really is a great blog! Thank you for your efforts. I’d completely forgotten about Diment, but I think I always assumed he was a construct, and that the books were ghosted by one of the many hacks who operated in the trashlit dept at that time. It’s too late now, because he’s dead, but Desmond Elliott might have been the key to the mystery of his disappearance. He wasn’t just the producer (although knowing him, he would certainly have had his finger in that particular pie!) but an agent and publisher, discoverer of Jilly Cooper and founder of Arlington Books. He would almost cetainly have been Diment’s literary agent. More about him here: http://www.desmondelliottprize.org/about_desmond_elliott.asp
I have no citation for this but my impression at the time also was that, as mike Petty says, Adam Diment was a house pseudonym used the way ‘Hank Janson’ was for a series of anonymous hacks paid a pittance, the ‘author character’ created for PR and the photographs staged with a suitable model (see ‘Hank Janson’ interviewed by Dan Farson etc), the ‘disappearance’ another publicity stunt to cover ever-falling sales. The books were as atrocious to read as you describe, but the PR was huge — the sexy/swinging London cover illustrations used as art for huge posters on the tube. I distinctly remember walking past them through the passenger tunnels at Charing Cross Road. Great blog.
I can remember when just moving from one part of Fulham to another was like going to a different world. The Fulham Road was where the “posh” people lived.
Great post; most amusing!
Another Brit novelist (though much more serious) from that era who’s a cipher, despite online searching, was Jacqueline Gillot. As far as I can tell, “Salvage” was her one book, although she was journalist, as well.
I’ve read “Salvage” twice. I dig it!
Carry on!
I was around London in the latter half of that delirious decade. I knew Adam slightly through Suzie Mandrake, his girlfriend and minor goddess and muse who had also sat for Annigoni. Adam was no construct; he was bright, kind and had his feet on the ground when many of us did not. I remember lunching with him and Suzie at his place on Tregunter Road: he kept a pet rat, had a fancy little weather center and dropped me off at the Earls Court tube from his Aston Martin Volante. I last saw him in Ibiza in 1971 over breakfast in a bright, sunny square. He told me he was on his way to California to enroll at UCLA to study psychology (maybe those rats?). And maybe, like me, he got trapped in the gilded cage of California life.
Oh this is getting better and better. Just one thing Mr MV Harry. What’s a weather center?
Also, what happened to Suzie Mandrake?
Weather center: one of those clock-like devices that read humidity, phases of the moon etc. This would have had a clockwork mechanism not electronic so quite fancy. And Suzie …. in the early 80′s she was living in Gunter Grove with her son. But she too has dropped off the map. I was a bit in love with her, of course …..
In reply to JD King’s post regarding Jacky Gillott, she wrote at least five novels. She was married to John Percival, a BBC Producer, and I assumed always wrote under her maiden name. She killed herself in 1980 having suffered from severe depression for a number of years leaving two sons. She was a great interviewer as well as a fine novelist.
MVHarry, thanks so much for your info!
Thanks for the article and the discussion! I heard about Adam Diment about six months ago and started tracking down his books. ‘Think Inc.’ is the only one I haven’t managed to find anywhere – at least not for a reasonable price.
Anyway, does anyone happen to know where to find any interviews of or articles about Diment? Or does anyone know on which issue of Life those pictures can be found?
Does anyone know where the picture at the top of the post featuring Adam Diment hand in hand with a couple of birds was taken?
Rob
Rob: ‘Does anyone know where the picture at the top of the post featuring Adam Diment hand in hand with a couple of birds was taken?’
My guess is Markham Square, on the King’s Road, just down from a pub that I’m thinking is the Chelsea Potter. Features in The Servant too, if I’m not mistaken.
I was a friend of Adam in 1969/1970 when he was still in Tregunter Rd and still drove his Aston Martin – many times taking me at break neck speed through the Knightsbridge underpass. He didn’t usually drink at the Chelsea Potter (still on Kings Rd). ‘The Chelsea Set’ (inc him) drank at the Markham Arms on Kings Rd next door to Mary Quant’s shop which was on the corner of Markham Sq (Markham Arms now a buiding soc). I would say that photo is difficult to pin point but not Markham Sq.
If anybody’s still interested, I’ve received some more information via an old publishing mucker, which doesn’t necessarily contradict any of the foregoing!:
“You know, the whole story of Adam Diment was told in Eric Hiscock’s first volume of memoirs – Last Boat to Folly Bridge … Desmond Elliott (who died in 2003) was Diment’s agent but when he had the mss submitted he gave it to Eric for an opinion. Diment eventually only produced four books out of the six book contract – whether the story that he eventually sunk into obscurity in Kent, after blowing his mind on drugs in Turkey, is true, perhaps it would be worth chasing whoever took over Desmond’s authors…Diment turned up broke a couple of years later and published a 4th book. But the contract was for 6 books, and 5 and 6 never appeared. And the rumour was he settled in Kent and followed his dad into farming … his father was a farmer in Sussex when Diment lived in Fulham in 1967 as a then 23 year old advertising man.”
The relevant extract from Eric Hiscock’s memoirs:
“The Dolly Dolly Spy came into my hands in typescript form in 1967 from the young publisher-author’s agent, Irish-born Desmond Elliot, who is inclined to ask my opinion of some of the manuscripts that fall into his hands. I read The Dolly Dolly Spy in less than two hours one evening and rather recklessly suggested that here was the biggest thing in the entertainment world since the Beatles. I also suggested Peter Hebdon (Michael Joseph) might feel inclined to back such an up-swinging talent. He did. His firm snapped it up, signed its author for a series of books to come, and launched him with a financial blare of trumpets that would have wakened Richard Hannay and Sherlock Holmes in their graves. He also sold the Diment talent to the Pan paperback company for a remarkable high sum. Elliott, as keen an agent as any in the business, sold him in 17 countries including America where, on the book’s publication, he did the city by city, coast to coast trek like a seasoned word-warrior. Two more books, even better than the first, came from his pen. Then he disappeared as suddenly as he came. On April 3, 1969, he quit Britain with a beautiful Cuban girl, called Camille, whom he had met at a party in London. `I don’t believe in marriage,’ she told a Fleet Streeter, `but Adam and I are very close friends’, a familiar refrain if ever there was one. How much of the £100,000 he had made out of The Dolly Dolly Spy and the other pair of swing-thrillers he took with him is anybody’s guess, and when challenged by the Fleet Streeter his friend Camille had talked to about marriage, he replied: `I’d rather not say too much about it.’
So much for pipe-dreams. The publisher’s nark in me had seen vast profits for his publishers in Adam, but alas! Diments are not, it seems, forever.”
Have been following the Diment story for a few years. Found one report that he was here in Australia. But in 2002 there was a Frederick A Diment living in Kent.
The photo of Diment and the two women – they’re standing on Royal Avenue between the old Safeway and the former Chelsea Drug Store (now MacDonald’s). Just about visible behind them is 120 King’s Road, then the Thomas Crapper shop (no accident, surely).
I read the Diment books several times as an adolescent and loved them. The first one is almost realistic and owes a lot to Deighton and Gavin Lyall, the next two are Avengers-style spy fantasies, with the last one coming down to earth with a very bleak ending, which was somehow appropriate as an end to Diment’s literary career.
This reply to London Lee: “just moving from one part of Fulham to another was like going to a different world. The Fulham Road was where the “posh” people lived”. Of course, moving from Fulham Road to King´s Road was like moving to another world. Posh people lived anywhere in South West 3, or at some mews in Fulham, and so. But definitely, it was indeed like moving to a different world. I lived in Chelsea, at Elm Park Gardens for five years, as a student at the London School of Film Technique, nowadays the London Film School at the same facilities in Covent Garden. Whenever I was poor, moneyless I´d say, and I felt myself like, I used to travel on the 14 bus along Fulham Road to Central London. Whenever I was rich, and felt myself like, I travelled on the 11 bus along King´s Road to Central London.
A reply to Mike Petty: it is indeed the Chelsea Potter, at Markham Square on the King´s Road.
A reply for everybody: doctor Adam Diment is on Fred Marshall´s Popdown, the 1969 musical on the swinging people who happened to be there in Chelsea, mostly, where the action was, in the late sixties, early seventies. Popdown is now a cult film.
I’m as raging a fan of the fashion, film and literature of swinging London as most of the contributors so far, but I’d never come across the fascinating story of Adam Diment before. His disappearance and subsequent reclusiveness has all the makings of an interesting biography–or at least an interesting magazine feature. Has anyone tried to contact the FA Diment in Kent mentioned by Damian Kringas? Thanks much to Mike Petty for the excerpt.
To all your queries, may I say quite categorically that Adam is well and living life to the full in far off places. He continued to write well beyond his 4 book contract but apparently a change in style did not suit his agent/publishers and so, being the non-compromising somewhat eccentric Englishman that he is, Adam put his massive volume of manuscripts in storage and pursued a path of his own choosing; one which he continues to follow to this day.
Any chance of a clue to the country or even continent?
The Far East is about as specific as I can be. This dearth of information is as Adam wishes it to be for now.
To anyone interested, Suzie Mandrake is very much still around, she is my friend and neighbour living in a small white spanish village on a mountain top in Andalucia. She is an accomplished artist who has held several successful local exhibitions. She still has a striking presence, and is often seen strolling down to the beach in fur coat and wellington boots!
Please say hello to her from me, Sebastian
It was nice to see a little something about Adam. I knew him and his lovely wife, Jackie in the late 70′s and early 80′s. I lost touch after leaving England and moving to the States. I’d even tried to find them through a UK phone book last year, but simply could not remember the town they lived in. In case they ever read this, I hope you are both happy and healthy. My love to the boys also.
I am the series editor for Top Notch Thrillers which republishes using print-on-demand titles from the 1960s and 70s which we think do not deserve to be forgotten. Since our launch in November, by far the largest number of requests from customers has been to see “Dolly Dolly Spy” back in print.
We’d love to do it, but where the devil do we get the permission to do so? (I am assuming that all rights will have reverted to the author by now.)
To Mike Ripley,
It won’t be easy to contact Adam from where I am at the moment but, I will do my best to see if the rights have reverted to him and whether he would like to respond to your query.
Hi Delia
It would be good to get in touch again… The boys are well thank you.
Can you give me your email address.
I wonder if Adam remembers ‘Popdown’?
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=406039636&albumID=1644918&imageID=24054749
Utterly brilliant. I thought Adam Diment was an invention as well, and desperately wanted him not to be. To find out he is (a) real and (b) alive and seemingly well is brilliant news. If he reads this ever, please do another book. Of course they’re dated. But no more than James Bond was/is. And much more hip.
To Hu Chi
Thank you for any help you can give getting a message to Adam.
I can be contacted via Shots Magazine where I write a monthly column which has already mentioned the fond memories evoked by Adam’s books.
(www.shotsmag.co.uk)
A thoughtful insight and ideas I will use on my blog. You’ve obviously spent some time on this. Well done!
On a nostalgia trip I put Adam Diment’s name on the internet as I’d always wondered if he’d written anything following Think Inc. I was both amazed and delighted to find this site.
Unlike one of your correspondent’s I found Diment’s work thrilling and exciting right from the start, not remotely trashy or meretricious. and I wasn’t even aware of the publicity bandwagon but just bought the Dolly Dolly Spy on impulse because I liked the cover.
I agree with the correspondent who found the two following books even better. But I was bitterly disappointed with Think Inc, the style of which I found slightly leaden and the ending of which I also found bleak and enigmatic. I bought this book years afterwards, some time in the late seventies when I came across a second hand copy.
I write here because at some stage I came across a reference to Diment as having gone to Tibet to study Buddism and, possibly, to retire to a monastic life. As the vogue for Eastern faiths was all the fashion at the time, I accepted this as a possibility, even though it had all the aura of myth-making. But I found it difficult to believe that such a talented writer would have burnt his bridges in this way. Certainly Think Inc shows a change in style (for the worse, I felt), but Diment had the ability to adopt to the changes taking place in the seventies. How sad that his output should have been limited to four books.
Fascinating! I am reading this because have just reread the four as post Christmas/New Year relaxation and suddenly wondered what had happened to AD. I bought them at the time when they came out in paperback (couldn’t afford the hardbacks) and they are now fairly well worn. I do hope Mike Ripley can get it together to make them available again but I also think there should be a beautiful collectors edition as well as the print on demand version.
Me again – have just looked on abebooks and there are 327 copies of the books available at prices ranging from 0.61p for paperbacks to £63 for first issue hard backs with dustwrappers. I conclude that there is no need to reprint at this time – much more fun to read one of the original publications even if a slightly battered paperback.
I’m from Germany and stayed with Adam, Jackie and the two boys for several times in the early 90ies. I remember him as a very nice, understanding, knowing and entertaining man. Also, I very much enjoyed the privilege of having a correspondence with him for several years. I learned a lot from him and I think I benefit from his advice still today. He is a unique person.
Adam, or Jackie, if you read this – I hope so much you are well. Ingo and I are meanwhile grandparents of a little girl called Amelie (6) and a baby-boy called Noah (5 months old). If you like, we could get in touch again. I’d love to …
Simon Wilson is right in saying that second-hand copies of Adam’s books can bought on Abebooks, but not all are easily available. There might be plenty of copies of Dolly Dolly Spy, but I can see only ONE of Bang Bang Girls and the 17 copies of Think Inc are more expensive than a re-issue would be even without taking into account postage from Australia…. The other advantage of a re-issue, even as Print-On-Demand, is that it would introduce Adam’s work to a new, younger generation of internet-savvy readers as well as replenishing long-withdrawn library copies. Nobody gets rich from the exercise, but at Top Notch Thrillers we like to think we are preserving books which do not deserve to be forgotten. Our next issue of titles includes thrillers by Alan Williams, Adam Hall (the Quiller books), and Francis Clifford, who were all hugely popular in the Sixties.
However, without permission from the rights holder, there is nothing we can do, which is sad, as since we started the proect, Adam Diment is by far the most-requested author we’ve been askeed to get back into print.
Failing to check my own small website for ages has just now turned up a tetchy post, made back in October by “Nicholas Diment” and prompted by a Wikipedia link from the “Adam Diment” entry to my LJ. (There are now a couple of other LJ posts besides that linked, one before I saw this, and one – tonight – after.)
“Dear Mr Wormwood,
I was interested to see your comments concerning my brother, Adam, on the link from Wikipedia which are, to be honest, verging on the libelous. Not that he would give a damn. Adam was never in trouble with the Treasury. This is an accusation whipped up, we can only imagine, by the only person who might stand to gain in the unlikely event of McAlpine ever coming to the screen. Succumbed to drugs! Really, why do you make this sort of guff up? Adam is well and lives in Kent. Personally I think his books are crap and have not stood the test of time at all well. But then I’m not a author so what would I know?
Sincerely – Nicholas Diment”
Is Nicholas Diment really AD’s brother (or more correctly, did/does AD have a brother called Nicholas or Nick?) How does “living in Kent” correspond to Hu Chi’s nonspecific “Far East?”
And, if the rights questions are sorted out, how soon afterward might one hope to see Ostara editions of the books?
A couple of points here.
1. I am a great fan of the books, bought them new in the 1960s and still re-reading them now.
2. Adam Diment wrote a column for a teenage women’s magazine in the 60s. My sister bought it and I read her copy. Can’t remember what it was called… “Look”?
3. Of course his name was a pseudonym – based on a popular TV character called Adam Adamant (Gerald Harper) – google it folks.
I remembered the magazine, and checked with my sister, it was called “Honey”. Plenty about it on tinternet, but I couldn’t find anything about Adam writing for it.
I do remember it tho, as I remembered his magazine writing when I first found the books.
A few years ago (probably about a decade or more) I came across the books after not having read them since I was a kid and tracked down some UK first eds. Actually, though dated, they are fun. I got to wondering what had happened to Adam Diment and went so far as to track him down (actually not that hard) via old school friends of his. I spoke to him on the phone and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed about his writing days (I’m a journalist), which he declined.
I got the impression (I may be wrong) that he has become a stable family man who simply wanted to put the past behind him.
Since I last posted in January, Top Notch Thrillers ( the series of reprints from the Sixties and Seventies which I edit) has continued to receive requests to add Adam’s books to our list – especially The Great Spy Race. In fact, Adam Diment is the single most requested author we’ve been asked (by readers) to try and get back into print, by far.
Despite a considerbale amount of detective work among publishers and agents, I have got absolutely nowhere in discovering who owns the rights to the books which, technically, remain in copyright for 70 yeras after the author’s death.
Having traced and acquired the rights and permissions to over 40 thrillers from the same period (so far) I have to finally admit that finding the disappearing Mr Diment has defeated me.
To Mike Riple. If you contact the site administrator and ask him to contact me on your behalf I will see if I still have Mr Diment’s contact details and get back in touch with you. Cannot promise they are still current!
AJ
To Adam Jezard.
If you have contact details for Mr Diment, I would be very grateful.
I have tried to contact the site administrator but the link does not seem to work. You can contact me through either http://www.shotsmag.co.uk where I write a monthly column on by using the Contact section of the publisher I represent on http://www.ostarapublishing.co.uk.
The lyricist Tim Rice mentions going to school with Adam Diment in his autobiography, as well as his wish for the books to be republished. As he has contacts in the book world it might be worth contacting him to see if he could help?
Happy birthday Adam – just in case you read this …
I just found a copy of the hardcover edition of “The Bang Bang Birds.” I am happy now.
Fascinating… I well remember enjoying the books as a teenager but have long since lost them and sometimes wonder if they’d stand up at all today. Even though I actually grew up on King’s Road, sadly I was too young to embrace the full effect of the 60s there and disappointingly my life bore no relation at all to that of Adam Diment/Philip McAlpine.
It seems highly appropriate that the posts above on someone who seems to have vanished so completely suggest AD went variously to Turkey, France, the US, the “Far East” – or even the distant pastures of Kent (shades of Len Deighton’s increasingly unlikely biogs in his early spy novels)… So could Hu Chi – who seems to have the most exotic explanation – by any chance be a pseudonymous author still trying to put people off the scent?
Thanks for sharing the above, I’ve often wondered whether he had written anything else. I’ve nothing helpful to add to the mystery though. The best of luck to him. As a kid at the time I enjoyed his books immensely. Ah those days before political correctness and the big guilt spoilt everything!