Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was born in Surrey, attended Eton and Oxford and was a gifted, articulate student. His writing career began in 1921, with the publication of ‘Crome Yellow’. It is his fifth book, ‘Brave New World’, published in 1932, for which he is best known.

The title is taken from a Shakespeare play and the theme has been likened to the foretelling of the ‘New World Order’ attributed to the elite ‘secret societies’. People are brainwashed from birth (in a test tube), genetically modified, cloned, denied family connections, euthanised at age sixty and coerced into dependency on their  ‘happy pills’ (hallucinogenic drugs). Huxley took such drugs himself, even on his death-bed.

Huxley was influenced by the anti-establishment D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and by seeing the typical lifestyle in the USA and by a period he spent working at a chemical plant in England.  He believed that the population could be unwittingly guided into slavery to a world-state if there were aspects of that slavery that they enjoyed. In his time, television became the mesmerising sweetener, and today it is the smartphone. His friend, George Orwell, took the scenario further, with ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’. Huxley turned down as inappropriate an offer of a knighthood in 1959.

 (Image: Thierry Ehrmann at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

“He was not of an age, but for all time”… so wrote Shakespeare’s friend, Ben Jonson, in the preface to the First Folio, a collection of William Shakespeare‘s plays after his death at age 52 in 1616. Thanks to two other friends and fellow actors ~ John Heminge and Henry Condell ~ thirty-six of his plays were saved for posterity in this publication, to be studied and dramatised with unceasing admiration and the highest esteem ever since. Shakespeare is undoubtedly the most famous and celebrated British writer.

He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the third of eight children, was married to a pregnant Anne Hathaway in 1582, then made his way to London as an actor and writer of plays, poems and sonnets. One rival called him an “upstart crow”; another a “Johnny do-it-all”. Nevertheless, his acting company was very successful, playing to royalty many times, and Shakespeare became a wealthy property owner. He was able to retire back to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613.

Samuel Johnson quoted Shakespeare thousands of times in his Dictionary. Shakespeare gave us hundreds of words, idioms and insightful sayings that enrich our language and understanding of ourselves. We often quote him without even realising it..

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