Richard Neville, former editor of "Oz" magazine and the author of "Hippie Hippie Shake", has been observing culture and counterculture for 30 years. The man who was at the centre of the British youth movement in the 1960s is now in his 50s, married and the father of two girls. While still a radical thinker and writer, his views have moved on. Neville remains a controversial social commentator, constantly coming up with unexpected angles on the zeitgeist. This book comprises the best of Neville, and includes articles and essays on everything from parenthood and pot-culture to art and vasectomy: from "Howling All the Way to the Talk Shows" - an analysis of Allen Ginsberg; to "Back Among the Fringe Dwellers", which looks at London in the 90s.

Out of my mind: From flower power to the third millennium : the seventies, the eighties and the nineties

Literature & Fiction

Neville, Richard

Essays & Correspondence

Viking/Penguin

The complete story of Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer who inspired the hit Netflix series The Serpent. Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great conmen, and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. Born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, Sobhraj grew up deprived of a sense of identity, moving to France before being imprisoned and stripped of his multiple nationalities. Driven to floating from country to country, continent to continent, he became the consummate con artist, stealing passports, smuggling drugs and guns across Asia, busting out of prisons and robbing wealthy associates. But as his situation grew more perilous, he turned to murder, preying on Western tourists dropping out across the 1970s "hippie trail," leaving dead bodies and gruesome crime scenes in his wake, triggering an international manhunt that put him at the top of INTERPOL's most wanted list. On the Trail of the Serpent draws its readers into the story of Sobhraj's life as told exclusively to journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke by the investigators, families of the victims, and even Sobhraj himself. Blurring the boundaries between true crime and novelization, this remains the definitive book about Sobhraj--a riveting tale of sex, drugs, adventure, and murder.

On the Trail of the Serpent: The Epic Hunt for the Bikini Killer

Biographies & Memoirs

Clarke, Julie

True Crime

Penguin??Books

Play power

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

CAPE.

The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj

Pan/Macmillan

Richard Neville was a main figure of the 60s youth scene. Making a name for himself by founding the subversive review OZ in Australia, for which he faced an obscenity trial, he went on to issue his counterculture publication from the UK while roaming the world to report on what the "Underground" was up to. PLAY POWER is an exhaustive (300 pages) compilation of anecdotes about the Underground scene, mainly 1967 to early 1970, with a few references back to the American civil rights movement or Beatnik predecessors. The book has little structure, being simply a series of self-contained writings charting some events  that caught Neville's interest. The reader is soon absorbed in these years of wild happenings. Neville describes topics from making love behind the Paris barricades in May 1968 to roaming the Istanbul-Kathmandu trail to how to buy dope or even grow your own. There are sad vignettes and heartwarming bits such as an old man's reminisces about joining the Underground after a long life as a straight. In the last part of the book he draws a useful distinction between the Underground and the New Left, two scenes which tend to be conflated in stereotypical depictions of the 1960s today. Neville writes about these massive social changes with obvious delight, feeling that these self-empowered young people are a wave of the future. That the Underground pretty much evaporated after the book was published makes this optimism rather poignant. Still, one mostly can't help share his enthusiasm for the promise of this era.
For anyone interested in the radicalism of the late 1960s, Neville's book is a must-read. Sad that it fell out of print--though it is so much of its time that a new edition would be hard to come up with--but seek it out on the used market with zeal.

Play Power: Exploring the International Underground

Random House]

Hardcover in good condition. Jacket not price-clipped. Original price 1.90, 38s net. Includes fold-out poster game 'Headpoly' in pocket on rear pastedown. Jacket spine is slightly sunned. Jacket leading corners, edges and spine ends are lightly bumped and worn. Boards, page block and a few pages are lightly marked. Spine ends are slightly tanned. Text remains clear throughout. Binding is sound. HCW

Play Power

Paladin

When Richard Neville arrived in London in 1966 after a six-month overland trek from Australia, the first thing he did was visit Bibi: "The famous boutique throbbed with The Animals, cash registers and scantily clad women...the air was tinged with the perfume of Arabia, and some of its hash...I nearly fainted". Five years later he was gaoled for 15 months for publishing an obscene article, "Schoolkids Oz". In the intervening years, as editor of "Oz", the hippies handbook and monument to psychedelia, Neville was the darling of the in-crowd: the liberal intellectuals, writers, fashion designers, rock musicians, artists and business people. Through it all he remained amused and objective, frequently startling even his closest admirers with his unexpected views on everything from free love to the Vietnam War.

Hippie Hippie Shake - "Oz", Love, Obscenity and Me: The Truth Behind the Rumours Behind the Headlines

BLOOMSBURY

When Richard Neville arrived in London in 1966, the first thing he did was visit Biba: 'the famous boutique throbbed with The Animals, cash registers and skimpily clad women ...the air was tinged with hash ...I nearly fainted'. Five years later, Neville was sentenced to fifteen months for publishing an obscene article, "Schoolkids Oz", and John Lennon joined the throngs of protestors singing his own composition "God Save Oz". In the intervening years, as editor of "Oz", the hippies' handbook and a totem to psychedelia, Neville was at the centre of the Sixties youthquake, surrounded by rock musicians, intellectuals, artists, and fabulous freaks. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ...and then the hash hit the fan.

Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-ins, the Screw Ups, the Sixties

History

Europe

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

A Pirate of Parts

BiblioLife

A novel about an American theatre company first published in 1913.

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