Hanley, born on 17 February 1916 in Liverpool (not County Cork, Ireland, as he claimed), was the youngest of a large, Irish-Liverpudleian Catholic family.
Both his working-class parents were from Ireland, his father Edward from Dublin, his mother Bridget from Cobh, County Cork, but were married in Liverpool in 1891.
[5] Joining the King's African Rifles of the British army on the outbreak of the Second World War, Hanley served in Somalia and in Burma, where Monsoon Victory (1946) is set.
Gerald Hanley's novels reflect his experiences of living in Africa, both Kenya and Somalia, as well as in Burma and the Indian sub-continent, and of seeing the "influence of the British in the most distant parts of the world",[13] as well as his life as a soldier.
The Consul at Sunset (1951), The Year of the Lion (1953) and Drinkers of Darkness (1955) have for their background the life of expatriates in Kenya, as the British Empire declines.
For example, Without Love is set in present-day Barcelona, and its protagonist is the seedy son of a London-Irish family, who is an executioner for Russia's secret police.