1,839 words
Colin Wilson
The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men
London: Anova Books, 2007
When Colin Wilson sat down in 2006 to write his own history of the “Angry Young Men,” it was mainly a matter of settling accounts. There had been at least two other similarly-named books on the subject, and they were informative and entertaining. (more…)
1,352 words
The following is being published in commemoration of George Orwell’s 121st birthday today.
I’ve been trying to figure out how George Orwell fits into that 1950s literary phenomenon, or cult, called the Angry Young Men. The Angries, as a movement, were partly an invention of the British popular press of 1956-58. Some writers who are included among them, notably Kingsley Amis, rejected the label and got counted in only because they were new young writers with an irksome attitude. Others, such as Colin Wilson, treated the whole concept whimsically or dismissively but used it as a publicity tool. (more…)
You can buy James J. O’Meara’s Mysticism After Modernism here.
You can buy James J. O’Meara’s Mysticism After Modernism here.
1,646 words
James J. O’Meara has a book out, Mysticism After Modernism: Crowley, Evola, Neville, Watts, Colin Wilson, and Other Populist Gurus, published by Manticore Press. The book is about where mysticism intersects with culture and politics, rather than being some purely academic look at mysticism and the occult. It is also about thinkers who used magic to enact real-world change.
Much of the Right is dismissive or derisive of the occult, their criticisms ranging from conspiracy theories about evil Illuminati occultists to dismissing the New Age scene as being solely for Left-wing hippies. Regardless, there is a lot of crossover appeal and syncretic occultism. (more…)
You can pre-order Jonathan Bowden’s collection The Cultured Thug here.
You can pre-order Jonathan Bowden’s collection The Cultured Thug here.
2,507 words
Jonathan Bowden (ed. by Greg Johnson)
The Cultured Thug
San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2023
Stylistically there are two kinds of Jonathan Bowden essay. There are the neat, trim, polished ones that clock in at 800 to 1,100 words, like a review in The Spectator. Then there are the luxuriant, digressive ones that are always rambling off onto weird, and often interesting, tangents. The difference between the two is that the latter kind usually come to us as transcripts of speeches from gatherings where Bowden had an hour or more to fill, and thus had good reason to pad out his thesis with amusing asides and intriguing anecdotes. (more…)
Bill Hopkins, 1928–2011
Bill Hopkins, 1928–2011
59:34 / 9,640 words
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Editor’s Note:
The following text is transcript by V. S. of a lecture by Jonathan Bowden given at the 7th New Right meeting in London on April 8, 2006 entitled “Bill Hopkins: An Anti-Humanist Life.” (more…)
Bill Hopkins, photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
Bill Hopkins, photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
7,100 words
JB: Were you an angry young man?
BH: Very much. I think everybody was very angry and frustrated during the 1950s and from the end of the war onwards actually. The whole country was in a state of stagnation, everything was pointless and meaningless. It was as though someone had stuck a vast syringe into the arm of the nation and all the energy had been withdrawn from it. We were all in limbo. (more…)
1,082 words
We need to be reminded from time to time of the crucial problem that must be solved if our race is to survive, the Jews’ subversion and inversion of our morality that Nietzsche so clearly analysed in Zur Genealogie der Moral.[1] (more…)
Bill Hopkins photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
Bill Hopkins photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
928 words
A great man is dead.
Bill Hopkins (1928–2011), one of Britain’s most estimable Right wing intellectuals, died on Thursday, May 6, of heart and kidney failure in a north London hospital. He was born into a Welsh theatrical family in 1928. His father was the music hall artiste Ted Hopkins while his mother happened to be the theatrical beauty Violette Broderick. (more…)
Bill Hopkins photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
Bill Hopkins photographed by Ida Kar, 1955
293 words
XANADU
The name of a mythical nowhere place
where impossible dreams may be enacted
is commemorated in double doors
of delusion
and windows awry
that portray
— in abstraction —
the magnificence of its happy madness. (more…)
