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A Hero for High Times

A Hero for High Times

A Younger Reader’s Guide to the Beats, Hippies, Freaks, Punks, Ravers, New-Age Travellers and Dog-on-a-Rope Brew Crew Crusties of the British Isles, 1956–1994

Summary

‘My book of the year. Extraordinary’ The Times

A new history of counterculture in the UK, from the release of Heartbreak Hotel in 1956 to the passing of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994


Deep in a wood in the Marches of Wales, in an ancient school bus there lives an old man called Bob Rowberry.

A Hero for High Times is the story of how he ended up in this broken-down bus. It's also the story of his times, and the ideas that shaped him. It's a story of why you know your birth sign, why you have friends called Willow, why sex and drugs and rock’n’roll once mattered more than money, why dance music stopped the New-Age Travellers from travelling, and why you need to think twice before taking the brown acid.

It’s also a story of friendship between two men, one who did things, and one who thought about things, between theory and practice, between a hippie and a punk, between two gentlemen, no longer in the first flush of youth, who still believe in love.

‘This amiable and engaging blog-doc is an Odyssey for elective outsiders’ Iain Sinclair, Guardian

Reviews

  • Extraordinary... What a seditious, crackpot, transcendental riot this book is. My book of the year, and it’s only February.
    Roger Lewis, The Times

About the author

Ian Marchant

Ian Marchant is originally from Newhaven in East Sussex, and now lives with his family in the no longer extant Welsh county of Radnorshire. He has published seven books, including the travel/memoirs Parallel Lines, The Longest Crawl and Something of the Night. He is a sometimes presenter of documentaries for BBC Radio, and has appeared numerous times at festivals (including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party and Wilderness) as one half of semi-legendary hippie cabaret duo 'Your Dad.'
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