I met Heathcote Williams as a result of the No Glory in War campaign and got to know his wit, insights and impeccable manners through high teas at his home in Oxford. Although he fused art and politics like no one else, his principal commitment was to the written word. Works such as Whale Nation, AC/DC and The Local Stigmatic are classics on the environment, sanity and fame.
A progressive, not a mystic, Heathcote was one of the first supporters of the newly revived Left Book Club, which he welcomed in 2015: “Hymie Fagan’s book on the Peasant’s Revolt, Nine Days that Shook England, was and it still is the best book on the subject, though it has long been out of print. It opened my eyes to another England, one not anaesthetised by royaltymongerers, money-grubbers and religious superstitions, and it put lead into the pencil and fire in the belly of an ignorant youth hanging round Speakers’ Corner in the early 60s who bought his copy from the secondhand bookstall outside the Marble Arch gents. The Left Book Club is owed a huge debt as an intellectual mojo.”
Nothing from Heathcote was straightforward polemic. There is beauty in his language and joy at the idea of how things could be, like EM Forster before him, working at the universal yes.
