The arrival of new work by Heathcote Williams is always a cause for a very revolutionary kind of celebration. In certain circles, after all, Williams has long been regarded as the conscience of a very fractured nation. A key figure in London's 1960s counter-culture, as a writer, his first book, The Speakers, was an impressionist portrait of the characters who brought Speaker's Corner to colourful life in Hyde Park. An adaptation of the book was later staged by Joint Stock Theatre Company. As an activist, Williams was a prime mover in the 1970s squatting and graffiti scenes that graced the streets of London's then run-down Notting Hill district, and he co-founded the alternative nation of Freestonia. As a playwright, Williams penned AC/DC, a critique of the anti-psychiatry techniques pioneered by R.D. Laing, and wrote The Local Stigmatic, which was championed by Al Pacino. In Hancock's Half Hour, Williams explored the debilitating curse of fame through the final m
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.