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Heathcote Williams

Heathcote Williams’s Followers (13)

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Heathcote Williams


Born
in Helsby, Cheshire, The United Kingdom
November 15, 1941

Died
July 01, 2017

Genre


John Henley Jasper Heathcote-Williams was an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He was also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror. 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. His father, also named Heathcote Williams, was a lawyer. He 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." 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. From his early twenties, Williams has enjoyed a minor cult ...more

Average rating: 3.96 · 845 ratings · 145 reviews · 49 distinct worksSimilar authors
Whale Nation

4.11 avg rating — 148 ratings — published 1988 — 16 editions
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Falling For A Dolphin

4.36 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1990 — 6 editions
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Boris Johnson: The Beast of...

3.73 avg rating — 48 ratings3 editions
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Autogeddon

4.43 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 1991 — 5 editions
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Sacred Elephant

4.26 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1989 — 14 editions
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Royal Babylon: The case aga...

4.44 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2012 — 6 editions
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The Anarchist Jesus

4.38 avg rating — 16 ratings
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The Speakers

4.20 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1982 — 7 editions
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AC/DC and the Local Stigmatic

3.64 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1973 — 4 editions
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Was Moby Dick behind 9/11 ?

it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012
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More books by Heathcote Williams…
AC/DC Playscript 63 AC/DC and the Local Stigmatic
(2 books)
by
3.93 avg rating — 15 ratings

Quotes by Heathcote Williams  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Industrialists, who turn the Amazonian jungle into useless tundra or cement over half the planet, are not, for some reason, machine-gunned en masse, nor captured and exhibited, nor do they have their teeth extracted and carved into little men.”
Heathcote Williams, Dracula

“Asked what he would undertake first,
Were he called upon to rule a nation,
Confucius replied: 'To correct language . . .
If language is not correct,
Then what is said is not what is meant,
Then what ought to be done remains undone;
If this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
If morals and art deteriorate, justice "All go astray;
If justice goes astray
The people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This mattars above everything.'

Asked to surrender in World War Two,
The Japanese employed the word 'mokusatsu'
In replying to the Potsdam ultimatum.
The word given out by the Domei news agency
Was interpreted in Washington as 'treat with contempt'
Rather than 'withholding comment' - pending a decision
Its correct meaning.
The Americans concluded that their ultimatum had been rejected;
The boys in the back-room could play with their new toy
A hundred and forty thousand people lay round in helpless confusion.

Today 'peace' is mis-translated, and means a seething stalemate
Instead of calm;
'Strength' is mis-translated, and means paranoid force
Instead of right-minded confidence...”
Heathcote Williams

“A friend of mine, Warren Lemming, has this theory: if you’re famous, it’s as if you’ve got a golden monkey on your shoulder. When people come up to talk to you, they just see the monkey.”
Heathcote Williams

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