The lost masterpiece rediscovered in library hricks

Barman amazed by obscure 'working class' novel

- Neal Keeling

BARMAN Jack Chadwick was browsing the Working Class Movement Library in Salford when the 'crumbling, yellowing' sleeve of a book caught his eye. It depicted a kneeling skeleton dressed in ragged jeans reaching towards a loaf of bread.

Jack had never heard of the novel Caliban Shrieks, nor its author Jack Hilton, but, intrigued, he picked it up and started reading. Minutes turned into hours and before he knew it, the library was closing.

"I opened it up and was just blown away," he said. "It was so unlike anything I'd ever read before.

"At first it hits you as a cheeky rant, unapologetically northern, a rash assault on what you consider is the literary sensibility and uses the character of Caliban to voice that."

Jack asked the librarian for more information on Hilton, but she said very little was known, only that after a brief literary career he had seemingly vanished. So he began his own research.