Bill Hopkins

[The Silent Man]

Bill Hopkins published only one novel, The Divine and the Decay, in the late 1950s. It received such a barrage of fury from leftist-liberals that Hopkins' publisher recalled almost all copies of the book and destroyed them. It was the 1980s before the novel was published again, retitled The Leap.

I wonder how many people in this forum have heard of the novel, let alone read it.

[Fortis in Arduis]

No, but it sounds like good reading.

[The Silent Man]

http://www.freedompartyuk.net/public/standardbearers/hop.html

Interview with Bill Hopkins conducted by former Cultural Officer of the BNP, Jonathan Bowden.

[lei.talk]

all of the colin wilson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson) readers
of my acquaintance

eagerly awaited bill hopkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hopkins_(novelist))' the divine and the decay (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZAZ_enUS281US281&q=%22the+divine+and+the+decay%22). :nod:

most of us settled
for reading mimeograph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph)ed copies.

it was outré (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/outr%C3%A9) and exciting.
we felt revolutionary.



http://www.vaidilute.com/books/imperium/eagle.jpg (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=451)

[The Silent Man]

Bill Hopkins is still alive, aged about 82 I think. His second novel Time of Totality was destroyed when a lighted cigarette burnt the manuscript.

The only film of him speaking that I know of is here on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNFVLU0pIWM.

[The Silent Man]

all of the colin wilson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson) readers
of my acquaintance

eagerly awaited bill hopkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hopkins_(novelist))' the divine and the decay (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZAZ_enUS281US281&q=%22the+divine+and+the+decay%22). :nod:

most of us settled
for reading mimeograph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph)ed copies.

it was outré (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/outr%C3%A9) and exciting.
we felt revolutionary.



http://www.vaidilute.com/books/imperium/eagle.jpg (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=451)

Was this in the UK? I didn't know people made copies.

[lei.talk]

even in america - with our "free press",
there was самиздат (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat). :biggrin:

[The Silent Man]

even in america - with our "free press",
there was самиздат (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat). :biggrin:

Hardly surprising though that there was a terrific backlash against Hopkins - just over a decade after the war and here he was writing about a British Mussolini.

Have you read Colin Wilson's recent autobiography, Dreaming to Some Purpose? As you know, he and Hopkins were great friends in the '50s, but whereas Hopkins published only one novel, Wilson has published more than a dozen, plus about a hundred non-fiction works. Always the outsider, though, England is more interested in football and ballroom dancing on TV than it is in anything important - practically no one knows him these days.