The Slaves of Solitude is a 1947 black comedy by Patrick Hamilton set during World War 2 in a boarding house in the fictional Berkshire town of Thames Lockdon, modelled on Henley-on-Thames. A group of disparate people, including abusive Nazi sympathiser Mr Thwaites, are thrown together on Christmas Eve 1943. Hamilton is best known for his novels Rope (filmed by Alfred Hitchcock), and Gaslight, which gave us the term “gaslighting.”
The Slaves of Solitude was named as one of the 100 most influential novels by the BBC in 2019.