[1][2] The first book in particular contains autobiographical elements—Hamilton worked in London pubs before becoming a successful writer, was infatuated with a prostitute at that time, and eventually died of liver failure caused by alcoholism.

Ella, still nursing a sublimated affection for Bob, has to deal with the increasingly unwelcome (and not always comprehensible) advances of the lower-middle class Ernest Eccles, an elderly customer of the pub.

This is particularly evident in the third section, where Ella is attempting to interpret Eccles' semi-coherent intentions, from trying to work out if a bunch of flowers are for her, to an apparent proposal of marriage.

[citation needed] In November 1989 the novels appeared on BBC Radio Four in three episodes, dramatised by Frederick Bradnum, featuring Steven Pacey, Annette Badland, Emily Morgan and John Moffatt.

[7] In 2005, the books were serialised as Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky starring Sally Hawkins, Zoe Tapper and Bryan Dick, and directed by Simon Curtis.