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 Willi...
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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.
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...
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