Skinhead

Sixteen-year-old Joe Hawkins is the anti-hero's anti-hero. His life is ruled by clothes, beer, football and above all violence - violence against hippies, authority, racial minorities and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way. Joe is a London skinhead - a member of a uniquely British subculture which arose rapidly in the late 1960's. While other skins were driven mainly by music, fashion and working-class pride, Joe and his mob use their formidable street style as a badge of aggressive rage, even while Joe dreams of making a better life for himself. Lacerating in its depiction of violence and sex, often shocking by today's standards, Skinhead is also a provocative cross-section of urban British society. It doesn't spare the hypocrisy, corruption or excessive permissiveness which, the author believed, allowed the extremist wing of skinhead culture to flourish. Skinhead, first published in 1970 and a huge cult bestseller, is now available for the first time in ebook form, with a new introduction by Andrew Stevens. Nearly fifty years on, it remains one of the most potent artefacts of British popular culture ever committed to print. "I did happen to read the book when it came out and I was quite interested in the whole Richard Allen cult... suedeheads and skinheads and smoothies were very much part of daily life. There was a tremendous air of intensity... something interesting grabbed me about the whole thing." Morrissey "(Richard Allen's) work shouldn't require a theoretical summing up, once enough of those to whom it appeals understand its attraction we will have superceded this society." Stewart Home

Richard Allen was the pen-name of James Moffat, born in Canada in 1922. Moffat was prolific, though one repeated claim that he was the author of "at least 290 novels in several genres under at least 45 pseudonyms" still requires independent verification. It is known that Moffat contributed to an early draft of the novel Somewhere in The Night, which was later completed (or entirely rewritten - sources differ) by Michael Moorcock and published under the pseudonym Bill Barclay in 1966. However it was Moffat's gritty youthsploitation novels, published in the 1970's and early 1980's under the name Richard Allen, that form the bulk of his legacy today. The Joe Hawkins story began in Skinhead (1970) and was continued in Suedehead (1971). Later there were further instalments in Joe Hawkins' story, as well as novels focussing on other youth movements such as Smoothies (1973), Punk Rock (1977) and the final Allen novel Mod Rule (1980). Altogether there were eighteen novels under the Richard Allen brand. James Moffat spent most of his final decade in obscurity, though he lived to see the reissue of the Richard Allen novels in the early 1990's. He died in July of 1993, while living in a nursing home in Newton Abbot.