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John Henley Jasper Heathcote-Williams (born 15 November 1941) is an English

poet, actor and playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror. Williams is perhaps best known for the book-length polemical poem Whale Nation, which in 1988 became "the most powerful argument for the newly instigated worldwide ban on whaling."After his schooldays at Eton

, he hacksawed his surname's double-barrel to become Heathcote Williams, a moniker more in keeping perhaps with his new-found persona. In the early 1970s his agitational graffiti were a feature on the walls of the then low-rent end of London's Notting Hill

district.

Early life and career

Williams was born in Helsby

, Cheshire

. His father, also named Heathcote Williams, was a lawyer. From his early twenties, Williams has enjoyed a minor cult following. His first book,The Speakers (1964), a virtuoso close-focus account of life at Speakers' Corner

in Hyde Park

, was greeted with unanimous critical acclaim. In 1974 it was successfully adapted for the stage by the Joint Stock Theatre Company.

His first full-length play, AC/DC, (1970), a splenetic savaging of the burgeoning mental health industry, includes a thinly veiled but merciless attack on his fellow denizen of 1960s alternative society, and doyen of the anti-psychiatry movement, R. D. Laing. The onstage onslaught at the Royal Court Theatre

, crucible of much that was angry in post-Suez English culture, did not, however, appear to impede cordial relations between the two in later years. AC/DC won the London Evening Standard's Most Promising Play Award. It also received the 1972 John Whiting Award for being, in the judgement of a consortium of British theatres, "a new and distinctive development in dramatic writing with particular relevance to contemporary society." It was labelled by the Times Literary Supplement in a front-page review by Charles Marowitz as 'the first play of the twenty-first century.'

Other plays include the one-act monologue Hancock's Last Half Hour, The Immortalist, and the impossible to categorise Remember The Truth Dentist—an early effort, again at the Royal Court, in the subsequently distinguished directing career of fellow-contrarian Ken Campbell.

The inaugural issue of the London Review of Books included an effusive profile by fellow Etonian Francis Wyndham titled 'The Magic of Heathcote Williams.' His foremost fans among the famous are the late Harold Pinter and Al Pacino.

Poetry

Williams himself, however, regards fame as 'the first disgrace,' a phrase which Pacino from time to time quotes in private. He has been notoriously reluctant to cooperate in the promotion of his work on a commercial level, refusing, for example, to go to the US to promote AC/DC. He has been the despair of his publishers. The only book-signing tours he has ever done 'enough,' he complained, 'to cripple a rock-star' were merely the result of relentless pressure from Jonathan Cape's PR department. This episode, though having undeniably fortunate consequences for the poet's bank balance, was to have almost as though to confirm his own worst assumptions agonizingly unfortunate consequences for his private life. Not that this was Williams's debut 15 minutes, exactly. An affair some years earlier with the model Jean Shrimpton, an icon of 'sixties Swinging London, had resulted in the writer setting himself alight on her doorstep. Whether intentional or the upshot of a magical stunt gone wrong Williams at the time being an ardent fire-eater was never entirely clear. It was not unreasonably supposed to be a case of the supermodel dumping the scrivener. Somewhat astonishingly, however, in her autobiography published in the early 90s, Shrimpton asserted that it was Williams who had in fact walked out on her.

Cover of Autogeddon's UK edition, 1991

Energetic publicity efforts on Williams's behalf, spearheaded by Cape's Polly Samson, toast at the time of the literary division of London's wine-and-twiglet circuit, assisted him to achieve the mass audience he'd sought for his trilogy of book-length polemical poems on environmental themes.

Each was packed with detailed research and scores of photographs. Written some years earlier as visionary propaganda, they were probably the most lavishly illustrated English poetry since William Blake. They had otherwise been gathering dust in a corner of his then agent's office. The North American rights for the poem Whale Nation (1988) alone were sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair for $100,000. A more recent writer on the subject has described it as an "epic plea for the future of the whale, a hymn to the beauty, majesty and intelligence of the largest mammals on earth, as well as a prayer for their protection... Whale Nation became the most powerful argument for the newly instigated worldwide ban on whaling, and for a moment, back in 1988, it seemed as if a shameful chapter in human history might finally be drawing to a close."

Whale Nation was followed by Sacred Elephant (1989) and Autogeddon (1991). The latter still ranks as the most vigorous sustained flow of invective against car culture to date. It characterizes the motor car's global death toll as, "A humdrum holocaust, the third world war nobody bothered to declare." Each poem was made into a film by BBC Television, Autogeddon performed by Jeremy Irons who, somewhat to the chagrin of its author, turned out in promotional interviews to be an unabashed car-lover.

Williams is a consummate reader of his own poems, as well as of the literary classics. His performance of his Buckley-esque Jumping Jesus was characterised by an eminent London literary critic as 'like Alexander Pope on speed.' His public readings of Whale Nation have been known to reduce some members of the audience to tears. His recordings for Naxos Records, which include readings from the Buddhist scriptures, Dante and the Bible, have won awards.

Painting and sculpture

Williams's second bout of the first disgrace (see above) caused him to cease writing in effect, and turn to painting and sculpture full-time. Leading the life of a would-be recluse, he received prolonged tuition from the 'New Ruralist' artist Graham Ovenden, at the latter's home on the edge of Bodmin Moor

. The result was an out-pouring of hundreds of canvases, including satirical pastiches of the works of Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud and others. He also produced a number of sculptures of as irony would have it great piles of books, tottering and damp-swollen, elaborately hand-carved in wood.

Song-writing

Williams's occasional but typically anarchistic forays into the realm of lyric-writing include Wrinkly Bonk, yet to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, and Why D'Ya Do It?, a rabidly obscene rant on the theme of sexual jealousy, for Marianne Faithfull's 1979 classic album Broken English. Williams's words were enough to cause a walk-out by the female workers on EMI's production line. Perhaps not entirely surprising from someone who had been sent down from Oxford

for turning up to take his law finals dressed in an SS uniform.

Journalism

Williams was for a time associate editor of the literary journal Transatlantic Review, as well as being one of those responsible for the notorious alternative sex paper Suck. He was a frequent contributor to the London underground paper International Times during the 1970s, and to The Fanatic, issues of which would appear sporadically and provocatively in different formats and various countries of Western Europe. An anthology of his tracts and manifestos, Severe Joy, was announced by his then publisher but, to the disappointment of his fans, for some reason never actually appeared. A sampling did appear in a bi-lingual, limited edition titled Manifestoes from the Amsterdam-based Cold Turkey Press in 1975.

Film

The theme of Williams's early one-act play The Local Stigmatic is fame and its adverse consequences, possibly a reason why Al Pacino, with financial assistance from Jon Voight, would perform it off-off Broadway before he himself achieved what the play pillories. In later years the film version became known as 'Pacino's secret project,' representing the actor's debut as a director. It was released as part of the Pacino: An Actor's Vision box-set in 2007.

Williams's own film performances include Prospero in Derek Jarman's version of The Tempest (1979), Wish You Were Here (1987) and Sally Potter's Orlando (1992). His portrayal of the central character's psychiatrist in Wish You Were Here became something of a YouTube favourite. Williams has more recently enjoyed a steady stream of bit-parts in big-budget Hollywood productions, such as the ill-fated Basic Instinct 2.

Television

His first brush with TV overlapped with community politics. It came courtesy of a 1970s experiment by the BBC in what became known as "public access television". Williams, in the dubious if green guise of a tree somehow blessed with oratorical powers, regaled the watching millions for a full fifteen minutes on the virtues of life without Westminster

. Albion Free State was his name for a utopian vision of an England free from government and bosses. Williams was one of 120 or so squatters who had commandeered a small chunk of West London, just about visible from Television Centre

itself. Frestonia, as the extensive squat was known, had declared itself independent of Great Britain. The actor David Rappaport was proclaimed Foreign Minister and Williams served as ambassador to the UK. Postage stamps were issued bearing the face of Guy the Gorilla instead of the Queen; they made no mention of currency, but simply carried the legend, God Will Provide. The whole rebellion, which exasperated the authorities for years, entailed much litigation before the bulldozers were finally able to move in.

Williams later applied his abilities as a conjurer he has long been a member of The Magic Circle to come up with a Christmas play based on the little-known fact that Charles Dickens used to revel in performing magic shows for his friends and extended family. What the Dickens! depicted the novelist, with the likes of Thomas Carlyle and Thackeray standing by to assist, as he manipulated "airy nothings" and assorted props to the delighted squeals of foundling children from the Thomas Coram Home. The production featured a young Ben Cross as Dickens, with a supporting cast that included Dinsdale Landen and Kenneth Haigh. It was broadcast by Channel 4 in Christmas 1983, with a repeat screening the following Christmas.

In March 1993 Williams was the not entirely enthusiastic subject of a spoof arts documentary titled Every Time I Cross the Tamar I Get Into Trouble. Screened by Channel Four in its Without Walls slot, it implicitly sparred yet again with the recurring theme of the fatality of fame, its hollow allurements and the nature of fandom. In this instance, just for a change, a twinkling Pacino appeared happy to cast himself in the role of fan, implying his own supposed discomfiture with the whole grisly business of showbiz renown. The BFI movie database characterizes the film thus: "An account of Heathcote William's work, and Al Pacino's obsession with his writing. Includes an interview with Harold Pinter and footage from Pacino's film The Local Stigmatic."

The half-hour film was presented by the comedian and musician John Dowie, amply cut out for the part by dint of his own declared anorakish urge to collect all available Williams memorabilia. The fruits of his scouring the auction lists and the second-hand bookshops, he revealed, he kept in a special large wooden box. The element of spoof revolved around the conceit that the film's subject didn't turn up until the very last minute, and then only to decline to take part. In fact, he had appeared earlier, but in a variety of ludicrous disguises. The title alluded to the fact that Williams, living at the time in Cornwall

just the other side of the River Tamar, seemed twice over the years first after AC/DC, and then in the wake of Whale Nation to have come to grief as a consequence of having succumbed to the temptations arising out of not just one, but from a second 15 minutes of fame.

He in 1998 appeared in an episode of the US TV sitcom Friends.

Private life

Williams lives in Oxford

with his long-term partner Diana Senior.

Listen to

Sacred Elephant clip read by Heathcote Williams

Whale Nation excerpt

'Tell me all the swear words you know': Williams in movie Wish You Were Here

Why D'Ya Do It? Marianne Faithfull, Hollywood, 2005

References

External links

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