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63.
The Queen of Swing.
Privately printed, c. June 1975. Two foolscap duplicated sheets, printed recto and verso, stapled at top left corner. Several holograph corrections, amendments and additions in blue ink by the author (approx. 89 words).
Titled with a macabre pun, Williams’s essay provides a short biography of Michael X, written in the wake of his execution by hanging on May 16, 1975, and a scathing indictment of the Queen’s role in permitting it: “What did she do? She signed the paper. This totemic tart, influenced by a gutter press, yearning for a Black Manson, with which to terminate the hippy Dream of the Freedom we were born to, signed the paper.”
The last telegram, sent in vain to Roy Jenkins, the British Home Secretary at the time, pleading for compassion, included signatories Marion Boyars, William Burroughs, John Calder, Eric Clapton, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, Jim Haynes, Kit Lambert, John Lennon, Bill Levy, John Michell, Yoko Ono, Alice Ormsby-Gore, Cedric Price, Dan Richter, Nigel Samuel, Feliks Topolski, Alexander Trocchi and Simon Vinkenoog.
Old central horizontal fold and some creasing, o/w Very Good.
Together with:
i) a b/w photograph of a brick wall with the letters MICHAEL † boldly spray painted in white. Location unknown. Vintage print. 18.4x30.3cm. Photograph by Maggie Ellenby. In his essay, Heathcote Williams writes that on the night of Michael X’s execution “his name appeared fifteen times on the walls of Buckingham Palace… and a man risked his life to climb the railway bridge above Ladbroke Grove to write in large black letters MICHAEL †”. Some creasing, especially to corners, o/w Good plus.
ii) The International Times Vol. 3, #2/IT #169 (London: July 1975). Tabloid. 8pp. + Free Festivals supplement. Publishes Heathcote Williams’s jeremiad, “The Queen of Swing”, and an obituary of Michael X by John Michell (accompanied by a contemporary photocopy of Michell’s typescript, with his holograph amendments in the copy). Also: the Ruff, Tuff, Creem Puff Estate Agency (the estate agent for squatters); poems by Sinclair Beiles; news from the Cannes Film Festival by Jim Haynes; 8pp. Free Festivals supplement, incl. text by Roger Lewis, with photographs by Ron Reid. Old central horizontal fold, o/w Very Good.
iii) IT Vol.?, #8 (London: April 1977). Tabloid. 32pp. Prints “Is the Queen of Swing an Imposter?” by Heathcote Williams (uncredited): “Elizabeth Battenburg, formerly Elizabeth Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluckstein, formerly Guelph, also known as Windsor, has recently signed the death warrant of Stanley Abbott, who was allegedly the accomplice of Michael Abdul Malik in two murders which occurred during a time of great civil unrest in Trinidad… Ms. Battenburg has in recent years been compulsively signing the death warrants of a large number of blacks who have only rats to talk to in their squalid cells on death row in the Royal Jail, Port of Spain, Trinidad… Michael Abdul Malik apparently caused Ms. Battenburg great offence in 1968 [actually 1966] by sugggesting that ‘the only way the English Throne would survive is if the Queen had a black baby.’ ” Also: The Illuminatus, incl. a 3pp. interview with Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson; Lama Gendun Rinpoche; “The Histories of the Independent Presses of Kathmandhu, Part One” (incl. short poems by Olivia de Haulleville and Angus MacLise); more. Old central horizontal fold, o/w Very Good.
iv) IT Vol. 5, #4 (London: June/July, 1979). Tabloid. 16pp. Prints Heathcote Williams’s article, “Queen of Swing Swings Again”, on the execution of Stanley Abbott, “one of three people in Trinidad alleged to have been involved in the murder among others of Gail Benson, the daughter of a Tory MP”. Also: Gareth Sager and The Pop Group; front page photomontage of Thatcher, referred to in the accompanying text (continued in the centre pages) as having “meretriciously squeezed through her Saatchi & Saatchi video tube into the gullible mouths of the British electorate”. Old central horizontal fold, o/w Very Good.
(6 items).
