22 Facts About Heathcote Williams

John Henley Heathcote-Williams, known as Heathcote Williams, was an English poet, actor, political activist and dramatist.

Heathcote Williams's last published work, American Porn was a critique of the American political establishment and the election of President Donald Trump; its publication date was the day of Trump's inauguration.

Heathcote Williams played Prospero in Derek Jarman's The Tempest and appeared in several "arthouse" films, including Orlando, as well as the Hollywood film Basic Instinct 2.

Heathcote Williams was a keen naturalist and discovered a new species of honey-producing wasp in the Argentine pampas, an event he recorded in a book of poems called Forbidden Fruit.

Heathcote Williams was a magician and a member of The Magic Circle.

Heathcote Williams was a leading activist in the London squatting scene in the 1970s and ran a squatters "estate agency" called the "Ruff Tuff Cream Puff".

The then Shadow Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, wrote to express his support and Heathcote Williams was appointed UK Ambassador.

Heathcote Williams spray-painted graffiti on the walls of Buckingham Palace as a protest against the Queen signing Michael X's death warrant while there was no capital punishment in the UK.

Heathcote Williams's father, Harold Heathcote-Williams, was a barrister and his mother, Julian a clergyman's daughter.

The North American rights for the poem Whale Nation were sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair for $100,000; Heathcote Williams donated his share of the advance to environmental organizations.

In 2011, Heathcote Williams began a new collaboration with Roy Hutchins, who had performed Whale Nation, Autogeddon and Falling for a Dolphin in the 1980s.

Heathcote Williams regularly published new work on the digital, resurrected International Times.

In 2016, Heathcote Williams responded to contemporary political events with a pamphlet in the Swiftean tradition, an excoriating commentary on Boris Johnson entitled 'The Blond Beast of Brexit: a Study in Depravity'.

Heathcote Williams produced a number of sculptures of great piles of books, tottering and damp-swollen, elaborately hand-carved in wood.

Heathcote Williams's words were enough to cause a walk-out by the female workers on EMI's production line.

Heathcote Williams was a frequent contributor to the London underground paper International Times during the 1970s, to the radical vegetarian magazine Seed and to The Fanatic, issues of which would appear sporadically and provocatively in different formats and various countries of Western Europe.

Heathcote Williams appeared in Hotel with Salma Hayek, which he co-wrote, and enjoyed a steady stream of bit-parts in big-budget Hollywood productions, such as the ill-fated Basic Instinct 2 and City of Ember.

Heathcote Williams was one of 120 or so squatters who had commandeered a small chunk of West London, just about visible from BBC Television Centre itself.

The actor David Rappaport was proclaimed Foreign Minister and Heathcote Williams served as ambassador to the UK.

In March 1993, Heathcote Williams was the subject of a half-hour spoof arts documentary, a meditation on fame and fandom titled Every Time I Cross the Tamar I Get into Trouble.

Heathcote Williams had a son, Charlie, born in 1989, from a relationship with novelist and journalist Polly Samson.

Heathcote Williams died on 1 July 2017 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, from kidney failure, after a long stay in hospital for a chest infection.