Guy Burgess found rabbit holes inside rabbit holes...

To be a spy is to live two lives at once without allowing one to impinge on the other, a daunting task for anyone.

Guy Burgess was already living two different lives at once before he became a spy and was always happy for one to impinge on the other, indeed he enjoyed doing so and watching the results.

Born in 1911 to a wealthy upper-middle class English family Guy was schooled at Eton, the Royal Naval College Dartmouth and Trinity College, Cambridge. Such a background brings to mind a well mannered individual, respectful of his heritage and all it stood for.

Not so Guy. Flamboyantly gay from an early age Guy had been described, by the time he arrived at  Cambridge as grubby and  untidy and exceeded himself whilst at Trinity, being described there as 'a selfish lout' and 'dirty'. Guy was never much bothered with others opinions as he espoused his new left wing opinions with breath full of the garlic cloves he habitually chewed.

Dissolute and promiscous Guy was also precociously clever Guy. Though failing to leave Cambridge with the expected double first he was able to network and this, along with his leftwing views, led to his being talent-spotted by the already KGB agent Kim Philby who recommended him to his handler, Arnold Deutsch who, very perceptively, saw great potential in Guy's "inclinations of an adventurer" as a new recruit to the group who became 'The Cambridge Five'.

Guy's only concession  to his life as a spy was to renounce his left wing views. He remained as contrary as ever through subsequent jobs at the BBC, where he was described as '"a snob and a slob..." The rabbit hole was open and Guy dived in.

His contrariness continued as he joined the Foreign Office and provided so much information to the Soviets that they thought it was to good to be true and that nobody as badly behaved and unkempt could possibly keep his job and he could, therefore, be a double agent.

Guy's fortune ran out and he and fellow spy Donald Maclean fled to Russia in 1951.

The rabbit hole now took on a darker hue as Guy pined for that part of British life he enjoyed as much as he rejected the system that had provided it. He wrestled, once again, with living two lives side by side and died of acute liver failure in 1963 aged just 53

His ashes are interred in a quiet churchyard in rural England, far from the now long gone Soviet Union.

Two recent biographies shed light on the strange and divided life/lives of Guy Burgess.

Just take the ISBN's 9781473627383 and 9781849549134 to your local bookshop for the full engrossing story.

Another rabbit hole soon...

Philip K Dick's rabbit hole got made into movies...

The recent extension to the Blade Runner film story has also stirred interest in the author of the book it is based on, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" published in 1968, written by Philip K Dick.

Born in 1928 in Chicago Philip was one of twins, his sister Jane died aged six weeks. Brought up by his mother Philip developed an interest in science fiction and began writing stories, the first was  published in 1951 and from then on he devoted his life to writing. Alongside science fiction he also wrote mainstream literary novels with no success.

At university study of philosophy gave Philip a life-long interest in what is 'real' and this increasingly dominated both his psyche and his writing.

By 1971 he had developed a serious amphetamine habit and the rabbit hole began to open in front of him. His increasingly erratic behaviour was reverse-mirrored in the increasingly focussed subjects of his writing. Notions of reality, confused ideas of consciousness and alienation mixed with a cocktail of drugs resulted in psychosis, hallucinations and breakdowns.

It also resulted in some of the most original and challenging works of science fiction. His ideas and novels were made into films, 'Blade Runner', 'Total Recall' and 'A Scanner Darkly' being the most notable.

His health suffered from the drug use and Philip K Dick died in 1982. He was buried alongside his sister. At the time of her death his name had also been inscribed on the tombstone, the dates of birth and death were left blank, awaiting his arrival.

Emmanuel Carrère's biography 'I Am Alive and You are Dead: A Journey Inside the Mind of Philip K. Dick' is now available again, take the ISBN 9780747579717 to your local bookshop for a trip into a fascinating mind.

There is also an equally intriguing audio-only interview he gave in 1979 here

Another rabbit hole soon.

Bobby Fischer fell down a rabbit hole...move by move

Like many people I learned, at an early age, how to move chess pieces around the board, take the occasional piece and left it that.

A selected few, Bobby among them, took it to new heights. Bobby went down the rabbit hole.

An early prodigy he first lit up the chess world aged thirteen with his defeat of Donald Byrne..often called the best ever game of chess...here it is...good luck..I got lost at around move 5...Fischer vs Byrne

Born in 1943 Bobby found his first chess set at a candy store aged six. He understood chess in a way most others never do.

His deep understanding of the game and a willingness to break the rules led to an early rise through the chess ranks.

Along with this came a habit of making demands and laying down conditions before agreeing to enter a tournament.

Then came the Cold War clash in Rekyavik, in 1972 against Boris Spassky. It was presented as a Cold War showdown.  Bobby played it tricky, played mind games as well as chess. His head is working ten times around here...

He won. Then went down a 20 year rabbit hole. He emerged in 1992.

Then went down another rabbit hole. Big time...the trip did not turn out well...

The Rekyavik story is best told in this book by David Edmonds and David Eidinow ISBN 9780571214129...take it down your local bookshop, in stock in mine...

For a fascinating further read on Bobby down the rabbit hole The Atlantic, as so often, comes up trumps....or should that be checkmate...here it is..

Another rabbit hole soon...

David Litvinoff fell down a 1960's rabbit hole

The 1960's were a mixed bag. If you lived in London it was all about mixing. If you lived elsewhere it was just the 1950's with a new number in it.

Which is why the story of David Litvinoff is so fascinating. He mixed, he mixed up people as well, then went down a rabbit hole.

1960's aristocratic socialite Suna Portman summed David up best and her words are the key to Litvinoff...'He seemed to know all of us rather better than we knew him,’ very wise words.

Born in Whitechapel, London, in 1928 to a Jewish family of Russian origin  David was into his twenties when he began frequenting the new jazz clubs in the west end of London. This is where the rabbit hole formed.

At this time the first seeds of the 'swinging sixties' were being sown as an unholy alliance took form in a reverse polarity. East End villains took to the West End more than before and found themselves accepted rather than shunned. A mutual admiration society flourished which reached it's hieght when the Kray twins moved uptown and mingled.

David was, in many cases the key, he flitted, he flirted, he told those he flitted and flirted with all they needed to know and nothing about David except that he was the key to the mystery. So secretive was he that very few photographs of him exist, which is why there are none in this post.

David mixed with Lucien Freud, George Melly and other Soho regulars, back in the East End it was the Krays again, both sides looked to David for introductions to the other and he kept the balance.

David's highest high came when he was a 'dialogue coach and technical director' on the ultimate British film describing the 1960's, Nicholas Roeg's 1968 'Performance' starring Mick Jagger.

Now David was walking a tightrope in the darkness of a rabbit hole.

On one side the socially powerful, on the other the violently powerful. A dangerous tightrope.

David jumped off the tightrope and into a new rabbit hole when he moved to Wales in 1968 then Australia then, in 1972, back again to the UK to Davington Priory in Faversham, Kent, a big house owned by his old friend Christopher Gibbs.

David died in April 1975 from an overdose of sleeping pills.

Author Keiron Pim has, with diligent and dogged research, managed to find enough about the mercurial, secretive David Litvinoff to write a fascinating biography of a lost character of the 1960's of who Iain Sinclair said it was 'hard to find hard to find anyone who remembered Litvinoff as the cost of joining that club was "burn-out, premature senility or suicide."

 Bravo Keiron for a great read...as usual take the ISBN 9780099584445 to your local bookshop for a great read...in stock at my local bookshop!

Another rabbit hole soon...

Sonny Liston's life was one long rabbit hole

If there is one thing most of us know it is the date of our birth.

Sonny Liston was never sure of his and there is no record of it. Arkansas, the state he was born in, did not consider birth records worth making mandatory until 1965 and Sonny was never sure of his.

A childhood of which he said '"The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating" mixed with his illiteracy led to a life on the streets and crime. Sonny got busted but didn't moan about prison, at least it gave him three meals a day he later mused.

The prison athletic coach suggested Sonny should try boxing to keep his fists away from the law. Sonny was a natural, as an amateur he beat 1952 Olympic Heavyweight Champion Ed Sanders. A professional contract followed and Sonny allegedly said on signing  "Whatever you tell me to do, I'll do"

Sadly for Sonny the men who fronted the money were from the shadier corners of an already gloomy  boxing world and Sonny worked as an enforcer as well as a boxer. Though he rose through the pro rankings earning himself a formidable reputation Sonny could never quite escape the rabbit hole the gangsters had dug for him.

His serious countenance was mistaken for surliness so Sonny lived up to the 'surly' tag,  in interviews he was often monosyllabic and soon became a figure of hate.

 This was magnified when he beat popular Floyd Patterson to become world champion in 1962. Then came the two still controversial fights in 1964 with Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. Sonny was accused of throwing one and surrendering the other to the new champ.

The rabbit hole now fully opened and Sonny spent the rest of his career trying to find his way out. He fought often and won often but never became a serious challenger.

Sonny was found dead in his Las Vegas home on December 30th 1970, heroin and marijuana were found near the body. Heart failure and lung congestion were the official causes of death but foul play has long been suspected which, judging by the title of his deeply researched and grippingly told book on Sonny's life, is also author Shaun Assaels considered opinion.

For a trip down boxings deepest rabbit hole take the ISBN 9781509814831 to your local bookshop. As usual it's in stock at mine...

Another rabbit hole soon.

Laurel Canyon was one big rabbit warren...

Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. The 1960's.

Think music then and you are also thinking Laurel Canyon. The Byrds, The Doors, Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Mamas & Papas, Frank Zappa, Buffalo Springfield, Canned Heat, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, The Monkees...and more.

For them Laurel Canyon was a playground. But, did they ever wonder about that big building on Lookout Mountain?

Dave McGowan did, he wrote a book about it and the Laurel Canyon scene, in his hands, is riddled with rabbit holes, it is a warren.

The title sort of gives it away so there's no spoiler in telling you that Dave reckoned that the whole Laurel Canyon scene was a false flag operation dedicated to undermining the anti Vietnam war movement. His argument gains traction when he points out the anti war movement began on university campuses, not among the hippy movement. He adds grit to the mix as he notes that the young men of draft age who were in these bands were never drafted and many of them had fathers in shady corners of the armed forces.

Lookout Mountain? Oh, that was only a self-contained film studio set up in total secrecy by the US government to further the propaganda arm of the cold war, how the rabbit holes spread.

In the beautifully titled 'Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream' Dave takes us into the warren of rabbit holes he found and it is pure escapist fun to tag along and join the dots with him.

As usual take the ISBN, 9781909394124, to your local bookshop, it's in mine.....

OK....if you really don't have the cash for the book the first drafts as published online are now hosted by the authors daughter Alissa (Dave passed away in 2015) and can be read on her site Center for an Informed America

Many of Dave's other rabbit holes are also on the site, have fun but don't fall down too many:)

A new rabbit hole soon..

Hank William's life was one long rabbit hole

Hank left us with music that still crackles with the torment that drove it.

Born in Butler County, Alabama in 1923 Hank arrived with Spina Bifida Occulta, a birth defect which affects the spine and can result in lifelong back pain. Such was Hank's lot.

Back then radio was king, Hank listened, got himself a guitar and looked for inspiration. Street performer Rufus 'Tee Tot' Payne was his muse, ('Tee Tot' beacuse his bottle usually held a mixture of tea and total booze, hence 'Tee-Tot') Tee Tot taught Hank the basics of guitar playing, chord progressions fret-work and such and Hank took it all in.

He added stories as lyrics and began playing on the street in Montgomery Alabama, often in front of the office of radio station WSFA (the initials stood for With the South's Finest Airport...I love that!)

WSFA producers heard him and invited him to play the occasional song live on-air. The audience loved it and demanded more of 'that singing kid'. Hank was given two 15 minutes slots a week on a salary. Was that the first view of the rabbit hole?

This local fame and the cash meant Hank could form his own band 'The Driftin' Cowboys' and drift they did across the adjoining states, playing bars, honky-tonks and anywhere else they were invited. Touring then had no tour bus, just a couple of jalopies with Hank often on the back seat, nursing his back pain with whatever bottle of booze came handy.

The rabbit hole grew bigger as war took hold. The rest of the band were enlisted but Hank fell off a bull at a rodeo in Texas and was medically deferred. His continual boozing lost him his radio show and he spent the rest of the war working in a shipyard and playing in bars.

Hank once again fell down the rabbit hole due to booze when it meant his being dropped from the 'Grand Old Opry', a TV show which, for others, was a step into stardom.

The rest of Hank's life was to him, a blur of booze and pills. To others it seemed a mystery how Hank could, time after time, turn gold into dust.

Hank died in 1952 on the back seat of  a Cadillac aged just twenty-nine

Thankfully the music survived, Youtube has Hank singing 'I Saw The Light ' and thankfully Mark Ribowsky has supplied the best memorial to Hank in this new and beautifully crafted biography.

Scribble down the ISBN 9781631491573 and take it your local bookshop, it's in stock at mine.

Another rabbit hole soon...

JG Ballard wrote rabbit holes..

I think it is safe to say that JG Ballard dug more literary rabbit holes than any other tweedy middle aged man living in London's definitively suburban Shepperton.

It is also probably safe to say that JG Ballard dug more literary rabbit holes than any other modern author...full stop.

It has been said that Ballard 'thought the unthinkable', the famous  response from a publishers reader having read the manuscript of 'Crash' was “This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish.” 

Ballard took it as a compliment. 'Crash' was published and Ballard even curated an exhibition with the same name.

The site slashseconds gives the full details here slashseconds.org . 'Crash' still sells and is probably the deepest rabbit hole he dug. Read it and he holds your hand as you tumble down the hole together into a world where most people, however much they recoil and find it repulsive continue reading, if through parted fingers, anxious to get the end to then wonder...and think.

Ballard spent a fractured childhood in wartime Shanghai, which he described in 'Empire of the Sun'. He then arrived in post-war London which, to him was a strange, unworldly place. He tried medical school in Cambridge, then, in 1954, joined the RAF and served in Canada where he found American SF magazines. The writing rabbit hole for Ballard opened.

Back in the UK he slowly established himself as an SF writer, finding success with 'The Drowned World' in 1960. The sudden death of his wife in 1964 left him responsible for their three children. His writing became a warren of rabbit holes  and JG explored them to the end of his life.

The genius of Ballard is most fully explained in book form in an extensive and fascinating collection of interviews with JG collated by Simon Sellars and Dan O'Hara in 'Extreme Metaphors'

Read these interviews and JG Ballard will shine a very bright light on the walls of all the rabbit holes he dug. For a copy of 'Extreme Metaphors' take this number to your local bookshop ISBN 9780007454860, as usual it's in stock at mine..

There are also many interviews on Youtube and the full Ballardian experience online is here at ballardian.com

Warning: Compulsive reading...don't expect an early night!

Another rabbit hole soon...

Yuri fell down a rabbit hole...

There are a lucky few who achieve something that can never be taken from them. Yuri Gagarin was one of those, he was, and always will be, the first man in space.

 Yet, having been to new heights, he went down a rabbit hole.

Born in a rural Soviet Union collective farm in 1934 to a carpenter/bricklayer father and milkmaid mother Yuri was always going places. Intelligent and possessed of a winning personality Yuri progressed through the educational system, became an air cadet and joined a flying club. First glimpse of the rabbit hole.

His aptitude as a pilot led him to be promoted to Senior Lieutenant and he was one of twenty pilots inducted into the search for the man who would be first into space. The selection course was tough and when anonymously asked who they thought should be 'the one' among them, seventeen voted for Yuri.

So Yuri it was who flew into space for one hour and forty-eight minutes on 21st April 1961 in a metal ball, a silent Soviet era video is here and celebrates how Yuri becomes the first man in space

On landing Yuri became  an instant hero both in the Soviet Union and worldwide, his engaging smile shone out from TV screens, newspapers and postage stamps.

 

 Fame for Yuri had the same effect it has had on many thrust into the limelight. The rabbit hole opened when the vodka bottles opened.

The Soviet authorities, conscious of his propaganda value,  forbade him from any further space flight in 1967 after the crash-landing of Soyuz 1, (for which Gagarin was back-up crew) and the death of its cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, a close friend of Gagarin.

After qualifying as a fighter pilot Gagarin died on  March 27th 1968 when a routine flight ended in disaster, killing both Yuri and his flight trainer Vladimir Seryogin.

The crash has been grist to the conspiracy-mill ever since.

In 'Starman', by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Yuri Gagarin has a written testament as valuable as any of the many medals and awards that he has received over the decades and shows how even the man who flew higher than anybody else can fall down a rabbit hole.

As usual take the ISBN, 9781408815540, to your local bookshop, its in mine!

 Another rabibit hole soon.

Roger and Cathy fly down a very deep rabbit hole..

'Golden Age' is a term full of warmth and comfort so to see it in a book title next to the word 'hijacking' meant I had to read it and I'm glad I did because I found Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow, who fell down a very, very long rabbit hole in 1972.

When they met Roger was a disgruntled veteran of four tours in Vietnam where he had been seen as just another black 'grunt'. Cathy was working in a massage parlour.

Roger's anger found it's focus in the trial of radical Angela Davis, a plan formed in his head. Cathy was rootless and looking for fun.

The rabbit hole took shape.

Roger drew up a plan, they would hijack a plane, demand half a million dollars and the release of Davis. They would fly to Vietnam together then move to an idyllic life in Australia.

Mechanical reality got in the way, the plane they hi-jacked, as the pilot patiently explained, could not reach Vietnam.

Fate and asylum landed them in Algeria where they soon became the darlings of the Black Panthers in exile and icons for radical Europeans.

Algerian left wing President Houari Boumediene was intrigued by the pair and met them, took one look, decided they were fakers. They were forced to move to France where they were feted by the radical left, but it turned sour, big time. A rift developed. Roger returned to the US and narrowly escaped time in prison.

In his book Brendan Koerner holds our hands and takes us down the rabbit that was the golden age of hijacking.

It is a strange world, nobody from the hijackers to the airline companies to the FBI to the press saw straight so wildly spinning was the rabbit hole.

The spinning slows when Koerner relates meeting Roger Holder decades after the events took place. Now we have fisrt-hand perspective on a strange, strange time in American history.

And Cathy? After they moved to France she....disappeared.  The FBI would still like to say 'hi Cathy!'...

Brendan Koerner spins an engrossing tale which distils the US of the sixties and seventies in the book and talks about it here.. but for the full experience of this rabbit hole you need to read the book, as usual scribble down the ISBN 9780307886118 and take it your local bookshop, it's on the shelf in mine;)

Another rabbit hole soon..

Jim found a deep and dark rabbit hole to fall down...

  It has to be one the most confusing rabbit holes anybody has fallen down. How did a man who, in his young days, espoused Marxism and became a champion of the underdog and a supporter of Civil Rights in the USA of the 1960's become the leader of a cult which imploded into the mass suicide of 918 people in 1978?

The answer lay deep inside Jim. Born in poor circumstances in Crete, Indiana in 1931 throughout his childhood there was 'something' about Jim. He hung out with the local kids, but when play ended there was no going to  a friends house for supper, no sleep-overs at friends because Jim had no friends. The other kids were wary of Jim, he would conduct funerals for roadkill animals, sit on his own and read the Bible. Not the sort of kid you invited round.

This rejection gave Jim an empathy with the repressed in America, particularly African-Americans, he understood.

The rabbit hole began to form when, as an avowed communist, he was invited by a Methodist superintendent, to join the church. Jim saw the power the church had over people and, before long, had formed his own ministry to gain followers and further his beliefs. 'Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel' was born.

In the late 1960's Jim became an aggressive pursuer of civil rights, he aided the racial integration of restaurants, businesses, theatres, even a police department.

Jim grew inside, he could chase away the rejections of his childhood by freeing others from rejection.

The  'Peoples Temple' grew and grew, having at it's peak over 5000 members, and so did Jim's need to control it and everyone in it, Jim began to see himself as the 'Peoples Temple' incarnate.

He moved the base of the Temple from state to state, met with such as Walter Mondale and Rosalynn Carter, and received accolades from them. How dangerous this would become.

His early rejections led him not, as you would expect, to enjoy acceptance. Instead, paranoia mixed with his growing Messianic complex led him to reject such approval.

The Peoples Temple, as time passed, became a cult. Jim also rejected the Christian faith he had earlier espoused in favour of his earlier socialism....you can hear him here, full on Jim, the anger, the frustration, the references to his childhood and the growing paranoia, his rejection of the Bible and his own Messianism pour out of him in this audio of a Temple meeting,  Jim Jones preaches...

Eventually Jim moved the Temple to Guyana, where, he determined, the socialist utopia would come to be.

The result, as we know, was disaster.

Jeff Guinn explains how Jim came to find and then fall down a big rabbit hole that confused him as much as it enchanted others and led to the Jonestown endtime in this balanced, meticulously researched and calmly written book.

As usual scribble down the ISBN 9781476763828  and take it to your local bookshop, mine has it in stock;)

Another rabbit hole soon..

Lizzie finds a rabbit hole...

The 'cult of celebrity' and it's attendant inanity are familiar to all and often cited as a modern malaise.

The ancient Greeks are, by definition, anything but modern yet they had a Goddess of fame, her name was Pheme, the Roman version was Fama, see where this is going?

Both were Goddesses of rumour.

In the 'Aeneid' Virgil describes her as a 'swift, birdlike monster with as many eyes, lips, tongues, and ears as feathers, traveling on the ground but with her head in the clouds.'

Ovid in his 'Metamorphoses', describes Fama as living at the center of the world, where earth, sea, and sky meet. From there she can see and hear everything that goes on in the world. She lives in a house atop a tall peak, it has no doors but instead has a thousand windows.

If you found favour with her, notability followed. Fall foul of her and rumours would spread, she is often portrayed with her trumpet, blowing good or bad, depends on how she felt about you.

So, no more disapproving 'sucking-a-sour-lemon' faces please when you see the celeb mags by the checkout at the supermarket. The ancients were at it too.

Which brings me to the book to go down the rabbit hole with.

Pheme seems to have looked over the shoulder of Lizzie Siddal.

Lizzie was born into a working class London family in 1829, her upbringing was uneventful and by the age of 20 she was working as a milliners apprentice when the artist Walter Deverell met her and invited her to model for him. He was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and introduced them to her.

The rabbit hole was being dug.

Through this introduction she met leading light of the Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rosetti. An ill-starred relationship was born.

The rigid class constraints of the time led Rosetti to repeatedly promise to marry Lizzie and repeatedly he broke it off. She, in return used frequent bouts of ill-health to blackmail him to the altar before it was too late. The same ill-health also introduced Lizzie to laudanum, to which she became addicted.

A love/hate relationship ensued as Rossetti painted and drew Lizzie to the point of obsession. Their love for each other was never in doubt but it was as if they competed for who loved the other the most.

They finally arrived at the altar in 1860. Sadness and the rabbit hole followed.

Lizzie's first child was stillborn, the grief that followed sharpened her addiction to laudanum, she died of an overdose aged 32 in 1862.

Rossetti was consumed with grief and Lizzie was buried with a journal containing Rossetti's poetry nestling in her hair.

By 1869 Rossetti was in the grip of booze and chloral hydrate, the attendant paranoia convinced him he was going blind and could no longer paint. Writing poetry would be his salvation. He became obsessed with the poems buried with Lizzie. He applied for, and received, permission to have Lizzie exhumed.

The exhumation took place at night, Rossetti was not present but his agent, Charles Augustus Howell, was. He retrieved the journal and told Rossetti that Lizzies hair had grown after her death and filled the coffin. Rossetti published the poems but the poor response depressed him and he fell into a miasma of chloral hydrate and whisky. He died a recluse in 1882.

Lizzie fell deep down the rabbit hole and found Rossetti, who then found his own rabbit hole.

Their story, the epitome of the tragedy that love sometimes becomes, is best told by Lucinda Hawksley, nip to your local bookshop with this ISBN 9780233002583 for a copy of a beautifully produced hardback  which is full of romance, intrigue, tragedy and, as you look at the cover, and think "Yeah, I know that picture!" look for Pheme, she might be watching you!

Another rabbit hole soon....

Donald went down a rabbit hole...

The worst rabbit hole to fall down is one you create yourself. Donald Crowhurst dug his own.

 

Born in then British India in 1932 of British parents Donald, as a result of his mum's wish for a daughter, was raised as a girl until the age of seven.

Back in the UK he left school before the usual age and, after bouncing around, became an RAF pilot in 1953, that didn't last, the London Gazette recorded his commission being 'terminated' in 1954, no reason given. He moved on to the Army but got busted again.

At a loose end Donald moved to the English South-West trying to turn his habitual inventing/tinkering into business. Debts grew as he tried to support wife and four children.

The Sunday Times made Donald's eyes boggle in 1968 when he saw the announcement of a big cash prize for the winnner of 'The Golden Globe' a solo non-stop round the world yacht race..because Donald was now a weekend sailor.

Time was short, Donald took on a financial sponsor, a publicist and a boat builder. The rabbit hole was looming.

Ever the romantic optimist Donald mortgaged everything he could and laboured over the design of his tri-maran 'Teignmouth Electron' whilst his ex-tabloid journalist publicist wove stories of this brave adventurer.

Unseen by him clouds of concern were gathering. Experienced sailors doubted both his sailing ability and the design of his tri-maran.  These doubts were confirmed when sea-trials went horribly wrong and the deadline was looming.

Donald left Teignmouth in an under-equipped, under-trialled boat just hours before the deadline on 31st October 1968.

Wise heads wore frowns as he became a speck on the ocean.

Communications were by radio only. Donald reported his position only sporadically.  He was doing well. Some wise heads still wore frowns. The weeks and months passed, the better his position became the deeper the frowns.

Donald reported his position on 29th June 1969, he was in the lead or close to it as he raced up the South Atlantic on the way home.

Silence.

Ten days later the Royal Mail Vessel RMV Picardy found the 'Teignmouth Electron' adrift. No Donald.

On board were log books and a journal which showed that Donald had, from the get-go, fallen into the doldrums in the South  Atlantic, had made land for repairs, thereby disqualifying himself and spent months sailing in circles whilst falsifying his position until the other competitors returned to the South Atlantic where he would join in again for the home run.

Those long days, weeks and months of solitary life in the middle of the ocean with only his thoughts and guilt for company led to writing journals which both fascinate and disturb as you read. Are they the journals of a man sliding into insanity or of a man finding a wisdom which escapes the rest of us? I have read and re-read them, still not sure.

The obvious theory is that he found himself in a state of mind which made walking off the back of the boat entirely reasonable.

The less obvious theory?  Donald once again put into port, hired a boat for the day, towed 'Teignmouth Electron' out to sea, set her adrift and returned to port to start a new life. I love that idea, Donald is now living on an island somewhere, happy with his new philosophy of life.

'Teignmouth Electron' was sold as salvage then sold and re-sold as a dive-boat. Eventually she was dragged onto a beach on Cayman Brac, where the remains still lie.

  This photo and a thoughtful blog entry by visitors to the remains is here...http://panexplore.com/teignmouthelectron/


The book is...'The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst'  by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall ISBN 9781473635364

Available at any bookshop worth it's floorspace, including Heffers in Cambridge;)

Donald Crowhurst will come to life again in October 2017 when a film based on the story, starring Colin Firth as Donald, is released. (I have a gut feeling it could be the film of the autumn season...be fun to see if I am right!)

Another rabbit hole soon....

Jack goes down the rabbit hole...

Alice went down the rabbit hole...so did Jack.

Peaches go with cream, fish go with chips, rocketry research goes with the occult.

Something catch your eye? Something about rockets and the occult? Really?

Yeah, really.

Time to go down the rabbit hole.

Jack Parsons was born in Pasadena, in 1914, and christened Marvel after his dad but after dad scooted town Marvel Jr's Ma started calling him John, which soon became Jack.

That's a shame because Jack's life had more of the Marvel comic in it than anything Jack.

Jack, as I will call him, grew up in a wealthy family living on Orange Grove, Pasadena, known also as Millionaires Row. Jack spent his pocket money on the sci-fi mags that were on every corner news-stand, Amazing Tales and other pulp wonders were his reading.

Jack and friend Ed Forman decided to use the undeveloped land at the end of Orange Grove to set off fireworks, including rockets.

Now we see the rabbit hole in the distance...

Jack loved the complexity of chemicals the rockets needed to shoot into the sky..equally complex was Jack and he fell down the rabbit hole.

In 1941 Marxism lost its lustre for Jack so he and wife Helen turned towards the Thelema movement founded by Alesteir Crowley, the self-proclaimed 'wickedest man in the world' Jack soon became Crowley's right hand man and started playing with lit candles to impress people.

And then...and then...the rabbit hole gets longer and darker.

Jack's full embrace of the occult and the obviously late nights it involved led to some shaky mornings at work. Jack fell foul of his employers and they dumped him.

Jack then dumped his wife Helen in favour of her younger sister, who then, in turn dumped Jack for none other than L. Ron Hubbard, (then still churning out science-fiction paid by the word, his idea of making money from a 'new religion' soon to be named Scientology was still in the future.)

Now Jack is spiralling down the rabbit hole, probably head first.

To lose the job you love at the cutting edge of rocketry research (Jack's work is still, grudgingly, recognised by NASA) because you are Alesteir Crowley's disciple is one head-twist, to then lose your partner to another man, who also rips you off financially, is another. (In a way I'm glad Jack never knew the man L. Ron Hubbard would become, too much salt in the wound there!)

Jack was not daunted, he experimented with rocketry and the occult with equal energy and obsession until one morning in 1952 when it went wrong.

Theories abound about how and why but what is true is that Jack was fatally injured in a massive explosion at his house/laboratory.

Jack co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, now part of NASA and known as JPL, for me 'JPL' stands for 'Jack Parsons Lives.'

So, the books! There are two biographies of Jack, I've read both, the beautiful thing is that one fills the gaps in the other so by reading both you get the full world of Jack.

George Pendle's  is authoritative and the full title "Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons" (ISBN 9780753820650) suggests the emphasis given to rocket science.

John Carter's "Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons" (ISBN 9780922915972) has a different emphasis, as does the jacket,( not surprising given that it's published by the always intriguing Feral House ...not for the nervous!)

Scribble down those ISBN's and visit your local bookshop! My local has them both on the shelf...can you guess why;)

Another rabbit hole soon...