The Unspeakable Skipton Pamela Hansford Johnson by Pamela Hansford Johnson 9781853754715, 1853754714 instant download after payment.

Daniel Skipton is a Pioneer in Art. He’s also a rogue who hasn’t done an honest day’s work in his life. Instead, he bullies support out of aging relatives he’s never met and harangues his publisher for advances on non-existent projects. The world owes Skipton a living, but it doesn’t want to pay up. Outraged by life and choked with anger, our self-proclaimed literary genius lives by his wits in the Belgian city of Bruges. Along with a pack of disreputable allies—among them, Wouvermans the “antiques dealer” and Mimi the “performance artist”—he swindles a group of naïve English tourists into unwittingly supporting his meager lifestyle. As Ruth Rendell makes clear in her introduction, The Unspeakable Skipton is a wickedly funny sketch of the artist at his worst.
   Living in near destitution in Bruges, once successful British author Skipton is skulking in a café when he spies a group of well to do countrymen on holiday. Surviving on payments from his long-suffering publishers for novels he has no intention of delivering, and money from an elderly aunt, he spies an opportunity to swindle the tourists. But when an Italian aristocrat arrives, Skipton recognises an opportunity to earn even more, and conspires with a Flemish antique dealer to sell him a convincing fake. But will the conman himself be conned?