The Beast of Berkshire
I first saw him in London, in April 2008, at one of the bimonthly New Right meetings—a metapolitical forum he’d been chairing for three years. I had never previously attended the meetings and I had never previously heard of Jonathan Bowden.
Due to railway network delays, we arrived late. It was a gloomy day. The room was dark, steamy, pre-Victorian, crammed with middle-aged men—serious and angry to the last.
As all seats were taken, we took a standing position.
Lady Michelle Renouf stood up front, holding some fifty printed pages in her hand, performing an exegesis of the Treaty of Lisbon’s legalese.
My gaze wandered around the room.
There was a man to the right of the speaker, in a grey suit, seated on a window sill. He was sullen, deep in thought, his eyes slits behind pebble-like spectacles. He had curly brown hair, wild, like a madman. A wooden pendant, with a carved rune, hung around his neck. He struck me as authoritarian. It seemed a storm was brewing inside him.
Suddenly, a member of the audience, seated in the front row, interrupted the speaker. He stammered question. The question was answered, more politely than was deserved. However, the inquisitor was not satisfied, and butted in rudely with another question. At this point the man by the window came to life, and barked an order to keep quiet and save questions for later. The man’s voice was loud and aggressive, his manner abrasive, impatient, overbearing. Like a fly whacked flat by a rolled up newspaper, the inquisitor fell silent. The man by the window, resumed his position, arms crossed. There were no further interruptions.
A break followed, during which the room partially emptied allowing us to seat ourselves on a table someone—an angry man—had slammed against a wall at the back of the room. I had a clear view to the front. Some five to ten minutes later, loaded with pints of lager and bowls of chips, those who had gone down to the bar returned to their seats—punishing, coccyx-crunching wooden chairs of disparate vintage and design, good only for smashing on backs in a barroom brawl. By this time the man with the rune had replaced Renouf at the front.
And before I knew it the audience was clapping and getting up to leave, Jonathan Bowden, having kept us enthralled for an hour with a stellar presentation about the life and work of German film-maker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, ‘not exactly a household name, it has to be said’.
I was well impressed. The power, the breadth of knowledge, the pyrotechnic oration, the mastery of the language—I had not seen any one speak so manfully and yet so learnedly about an artist or any cultural figure before. Maybe I realised it then, maybe later, but a whole new world opened in front of me that afternoon; this is what the future should sound like!
I was also somewhat terrified. That man, harsh, loud, illiberal, able to channel erudition into blasts of Nietzschean ferocity, was no man at all—I imagined he was a beast, or a demon, likely to kill any sap who dared casually greet him.
From then on I attended the meetings semi-regularly, and each time I went back home further to research the topic of his talk. At first I only saw Jonathan at these events, but I came to know him over time, perhaps a little better than some.
I also came to see what a compulsive performer he was. His conversation was not only erudite and instructive, but also filled with anecdotes and hilarious impressions. The first time I observed this he was talking about Northern Englishmen, whom he perceived as dour, laconic, and semi-incomprehensible through their reliance on obscure regional dialects. These Northerners, at least the primitive harshness he imagined in them and which he seemed to admire, were objects of fascination for him, the Byronian intellectual thug.
First Conversation
Later that year I was invited to a garden party. The host was a certain well-known military historian, who appears in Mister. He was launching a new book—his prison memoirs. Jonathan was also there. After cocktails and conversation, the host expressed his intention to begin. I told him it was too cold to have his talk outside, so he directed us to his lounge. I sat in a corner, almost facing the audience. Jonathan was directly in front of me, in the front row, sitting on a garden bench with his head slightly tilted back, an amused half smile on his face. The historian, a large man in a pinstripe suit, proved an entertaining speaker—but I knew that from YouTube. I cannot remember what triggered it, but Jonathan’s reaction was pure Bowden: everyone was silent, having laughed at various jokes, but Jonathan heard something half-way through the presentation that amused him and he blasted out a single laugh: ‘HAH!’ Two hundred decibels. Pots and pans crashing down to the floor in the kitchen. He was completely unselfconscious.
Afterwards, I saw Jonathan standing a pace away from me, so I introduced myself. The monster proved surprisingly amiable, and I found it easy to converse with him on the topics that interested me; I found, in fact, we had much in common, besides politics.
The Human Hand Grenade
One day, out of the blue, Jonathan emailed me, wanting to see if I was interested in us cooperating in art projects. I was too busy, but I was interested in knowing the artist. Next time I saw him, we had our respective diarists book a date for a meeting, to be held a month hence.
We met by at a pub near where I lived, in July 2009. Jonathan arrived in a white delivery van, accompanied by his driver. I imagined the van was loaded with corpses. Jonathan was clad in a crumpled grey suit, with a forty-something’s tie and a white, pleated shirt—the kind that one wears with a dinner jacket. The shirt had a big yellow stain on it, so I imagined Jonathan had been at a gala dinner event the previous evening. The pub was closing, so I suggested we went to the next village.
We spent seven hours there, conversing about numerous topics. Jonathan was a like a pressure cooker: inside him, at forty-six atmospheres, was a library of esoteric knowledge, sharp insights, and funny anecdotes; once you opened the valve these keep on coming. But maybe he was more like a hand grenade: you released the catch and it went off, obliterating everything nearby. I later learnt that if you had things to say, you had to be brutal and forcefully interrupt, and keep on talking even if you sensed Jonathan snapping at the heels. He was a Nietzschean, so respect was bought with force.
If I remember correctly, during this conclave, after I gave him a copy of my novel and my two most recent albums, I took a moment to collect a book he had sent me, which was by then waiting at my postal box in the village. The book was The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Volume One. When I later showed it to my wife, she said the artist was insane.
If so, and not unusually, he was also a genius. His novellas and short stories are almost unreadable, but all the same the prose is incredible, uniquely pyrotechnic—that word again—in its use of metaphor, vocabulary, and striking juxtapositions. Years later, while reviewingTarr, a novel by one of his favourite authors, Wyndham Lewis, he would write:
Try and have a Tarr day, in which everything you utter to everyone is fresh and aggressively original, and you’ll find yourself dismissed as a monster by the end of it.
I think this applied to him. And my wife, a lover of literature, was certainly astounded by the demon’s prose.
Little did we know that he had less than two years to live.
Fire and Glory
Our next meeting was three months later, at an event in Atlanta, United States. Greg Johnson, then editor of The Occidental Quarterly, had organised an editor’s dinner. Jonathan arrived with Adrian Davies, shortly after I did. I was pleased to see him because he was the only person I really knew at that event—everyone else was a new face, or I knew only virtually or reputationally.
Soon another of Jonathan’s eccentricities became apparent. At the buffet, Jonathan grabbed a tiny dessert dish, onto which he placed a few items. Maybe a potato and a leaf of salad. This was repeated at breakfast the following morning, and again the day following. I remember that when we met in July, he had not eaten either, even after his driver and I, by then both starving for hours, ordered our dinners. After witnessing this four times, I had to ask: did he ever eat? He explained that in his part of country, people did not grow very tall, but did grow sideways. Later he mentioned that he had expected to see many 30- or 40-stone Americans, and was disappointed he had yet to see any. Evidently, fascinated by extremes as he was, his interest had been piqued by exaggerated news reports in Britain. Maybe he expected British pub meals and American cuisine to cause instant obesity. Not unlike me, Jonathan had a wild imagination.
Jonathan was also an obdurate technophobe. I was shocked to discover his mobile telephone was at least a decade old, and could not be opened. He told me he had no internet connection at home, and that, although he had a laptop, it dated from before the last Ice Age. ‘I believe in planning my own obsolescence’, he said. One evening I found he did not even know how to operate the coffee machine in his room—he wanted me to help him with it. Or did he? Perhaps he wanted conversation, and this was his excuse. I was too tired to stay for long, despite his amusing impressions of Ian Paisley and some other Irish cleric he once knew. As I closed the door, I saw him seated at the table, head tilted back, with an arrogant half-smile on his face, staring back at me.
History was made during that visit to the United States. At a private event that same weekend, Jonathan was due to deliver a banquet speech on the Saturday evening. That was his first time in the land of the unfree and as an orator he was as yet unknown to the audience. I had the quiet satisfaction of knowing Jonathan would perform a mass decapitation. Fasten your seatbelts, I thought, looking at the wholly innocent Americans. I observed him closely: back in June he had suggested that I spoke at the New Right meetings, and, although I did not think I would be any good at it, I had not discarded the idea either, thinking my brain would one day click—perhaps in two years’ time—into public speaking mode, so I wanted to see what happened in the minutes before he was due to go up behind the podium.
I knew this was an important event for him, and that future invitations would depend on his ability to deliver a knock out in the next hour. As the minutes passed, Jonathan became progressively silent, surly, bad tempered, even. At the cocktail he had said people often remarked how prior to speaking his manner became harsher. I could certainly sense pressure—the dark demonic force, the Vril—building inside him. Jonathan’s alter ego, Kratos, was taking over.
What followed has since become part of American nationalist folklore. Jonathan was introduced by Jared Taylor, who, unfamiliar with Jonathan’s biography, had earlier approached him for details. Jared delivered his introduction in his characteristic genteel style. Jonathan waited by his side, looking grim, scorning eye contact. Jared’s introduction done, Jonathan stepped in behind the podium. His manner was not only commanding, but impatient. He then did what no one had dared to do before: with contempt, he swept the microphone aside. He did not need it.
‘I HAVE A VERY LOUD VOICE,’ he barked, filling the ballroom.
Jonathan then hit the ground running, fast and hard, and orated for an hour. The intensity was electrifying. Everyone was paralysed. Had anyone not been too transfixed to look, not turned into a salt statue, he would have found jaws all over the floor. It felt like history being made. And who can remember what he said? Few would be able to tell you today. Something about dispelling the cloud. It doesn’t matter. It’s the way he said it that counts. It’s the energy he expelled, and what it did to the audience, that was important. From that alone everyone knew how they needed to feel, what had to be done, and, most importantly, that whatever it was that had to be done could and would be done, without half-measures or apology. Jonathan received a standing ovation. Applause went on and on, for centuries, and is still going. And he stood there, sphinx like, the Iron Man, as if nothing.
Last Meeting
Our final meeting was in December 2010. We again met at a village near where I lived. He came with Jez Turner, who now organises the London Forum events. Jonathan arrived caparisoned in a grey overcoat, which he never shed.
Again we talked about numerous topics, but this time we focused on projects. Two ideas were on the table: one was for Jonathan to write a book-length monograph, which I was to publish via The Palingenesis Project, Wermod and Wermod’s non-fiction imprint; the other was for us to produce a series of professional video presentations, similar to his talks at the New Right meetings, but filmed on location and with production.
Jonathan was cheerful during that meeting. He roared with laughter when I said I thought he did not have human legs, but trouser legs, or wooden legs; that I imagined he slept in his suit, with his shoes on, gurning; and that one day, his alter ego, Kratos, would be a character in a children’s fairy tale—a demon who would come at night, in a van loaded with corpses, to take away children who had shown weakness, and whom Kratos would transport to Antarctica, where he would store them and eat them one by one.
In any event, we agreed that he would start working on the monograph and that we would meet again in a month’s time to reconnoitre possible shooting locations. Alas, for different reasons, Kratos caught up with him, and I was later never to see Jonathan again.
To Valhalla
Our last contact was in the Autumn of last year. I had moved to distant hills, and experienced complications, causing me to neglect relations. Yet, these last few days I had thought of finally telephoning him—I had noticed his website was down and I wanted to know how he was doing, what projects he was working on. Sadly, before I ever got round to doing it, someone telephoned me: Jonathan had sailed to Valhalla.
A correspondent who learnt the news just after me said it was as if he’d been punched in the stomach. For me it was different. I was stunned. I stared into space. The man against time had had time against him. He must have known his passage through the Earth would be short. It explains the fury, the output, the fanatical pursuit of purity. Only eighteen months earlier, on his forty-eighth birthday, he’d told me he felt like a shark chasing prey. He was never just fine; he was always, in his own words, ‘always superrrb and getting strongerrr!’ There is a lesson there. But he knew that already.
Many have been surprised by their own reaction. For some it has felt like losing a member of the family. Jonathan impacted our lives more than we realised. He did not just educate us intellectually, he also educated us spiritually. His legacy lives on, as he now passes into legend.
Until we meet again… Goodbye, friend.
