Nicholas Hagger

Nicholas Hagger

Overview

E-Mail:

info@nicholashagger.co.uk

Welcome to the website about the works of Nicholas Hagger, British poet; verse dramatist; short story writer; literary author/man of letters; philosopher; cultural historian; interpreter of contemporary world history and of the influence of secret organisations on Western revolutions and history; lecturer. This has been compiled by champions of his oeuvre who feel that he has something distinctive to say which is much-needed today, and makes use of material by several hands and publishers' descriptions of his books. An eventual aim is to inaugurate and endow, with his blessing, a Hagger Centre or Foundation that will perpetuate his unique all-rounder's perspective and Universalist vision.

This website gives background on Nicholas Hagger's works - both published and not yet published. Click on Published Writings to order published works from Amazon. We hope you will get a whole view of Nicholas Hagger's works from this visit to his website, and understand his solo attempt to hold a mirror up to all aspects of our Age.

His most recent works are the subject of press releases which can be found at the end of Published Writings/Press Releases. Five are literary, one historical.

Summary/Headline/Bird's Eye View

The author of more than 30 books, Nicholas Hagger has an original and independent, interlocking view of philosophy, history and literature. His perspective as a philosopher, cultural historian and man of letters is unique. It is founded on Universalism. Click on the Summaries link for further details and for his innovations. It has been said that his work is ahead of his time. It may be decades ahead.

He has produced a vast body of work that includes a Theory of Everything in philosophy which calls for a revolution in modern philosophy and features the Law of Order; a Grand Unified Theory of history and religion which outlines the Law of History in a pattern of rising and falling civilisations; and a massive contribution to English literature (driven by his perspective) which includes nearly 1,500 collected poems, over 300 classical odes, 2 poetic epics, 5 verse plays and more than 1,000 collected stories.

Life

Nicholas Hagger was born in London in 1939. After Chigwell School, Essex, he read English Literature under Christopher Ricks at Worcester College, Oxford, and spent the 1960s lecturing at universities abroad: Iraq, Japan (where he was a professor) and Libya. As a budding philosopher he was drawn to the wisdom of the East, and it was among the Zen temples of Japan that he first experienced the metaphysical Fire that was to inspire his later work. During the 1970s he was in London, writing for The Times and other newspapers, as well as teaching and researching into metaphysical poetry and world history. The 1980s saw him win a reputation as an outstanding educationalist, and he now owns and runs three schools in Epping Forest.

In Greater Detail

Born 1939

Educated Oaklands School, Loughton, Essex; Chigwell School, Essex; Worcester College, Oxford (MA Hons in English Literature, a pupil of Christopher Ricks).

During the 1960s he lectured in English Literature through the British Council at universities in the Middle and Far East:

1961-2, lecturer at University of Baghdad, Iraq;

1963-7, Professor at Tokyo University of Education, Keio University and Tokyo University, Japan;

1968-70, lecturer at University of Libya, Tripoli, Libya;

1966, he visited China with Frank Tuohy and was the first to discover the Cultural Revolution that March;

1969, he was an eye-witness of the Gaddafi revolution.

During his time in the Middle and Far East he visited many cultures and civilizations, absorbed their religions, art, literature and history and sought, and found, the wisdom of the East. He also wrote his early poetic works.

During the 1970s he lived in London:

1970-2, he wrote freelance for the Times, Guardian and other British newspapers and visited Brussels and Tanzania on assignments;

1970-84, he taught in schools in London, and in 1974 became Senior Teacher and Head of English with the Inner London Education Authority.

During this time he pursued his research into literature, philosophy and history, and continued his poetic writings.

In the 1980s and 1990s he became owner of three schools, now known as The Oak-Tree Schools (website www.oaktreeschools.co.uk), and employs some 200 teachers:

1982, Oaklands School, Loughton (the school he attended from 1944 to 1947);

1989, Coopersale Hall School, Epping (which he founded);

1996, Normanhurst School, Chingford, E4.

In the 1980s his literary work intensified:

1984-7, he was a small publisher, editorial director of Oak-Tree Books, which he discontinued to do his own writing.

1991 onwards, his books were published.

In 1997 he acquired a historic house in Suffolk:

1997-2004 owned Otley Hall (which was open to the public), where Bartholomew Gosnold is thought to have planned, and recruited for, his voyages to the New World in 1602 and 1606/7 (which resulted in the founding of the Jamestown Settlement).

Through his role at Otley Hall:

He made three TV documentaries on Gosnold which were shown many times on the US East Coast in 2001-2, and often appeared on TV: US History Channel, Look East, Anglian TV, Heaven and Earth Show etc.;

He has often been interviewed on Suffolk radio and contributed to a one-hour long radio documentary on Gosnold, broadcast in August 2002;

He addressed many groups of the tens of thousands of visitors to Otley Hall;

He kept two Shakespeare libraries at Otley Hall; the De Vere Society library and the library of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust;

He was Secretary of the Shakespearean Authority Trust with Mark Rylance, then Artistic Director of the Globe, as Chairman and was interviewed at length on the authorship question on Canadian TV programme which has had world-wide release. (Having considered the alternatives, he now believes that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's works.)

He has travelled extensively in North America, Europe, Africa, Middle and Far East.

He has known a number of now deceased literary authors:

E.W.F. Tomlin, friend of T.S. Eliot and philosopher, his boss in Japan; Frank Tuohy, novelist and short story writer, a lifelong friend and godfather to one of his sons; Edmund Blunden, poet of the First World war and of Suffolk; Ezra Pound, who gave advice on his poetic epic in Rapallo in 1970; Laurens van der Post, travel writer and novelist, who admired his intellectual passion; Iris Murdoch, novelist who wrote him several letters; and Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate who corresponded with him from 1993 until his death and praised the narrative vitality of his epic poem.

He divides his time between Essex and Cornwall. At home in many disciplines, he balances the active life of an educationalist, rediscoverer of lost knowledge and interpreter of current affairs with the contemplative life of a man of letters, poet, philosopher and mystic. He is a prolific author whose long-term project is to present a unified view of the universe, world history, contemporary international events and human life in literary, philosophical and historical works. His aim is to reflect the Age in which we live in all its aspects.

Works

Nicholas Hagger has had 28 books published since 1991. Poet, dramatist, philosopher, cultural historian and all-round man of letters, he is both a prolific and innovative writer. His poetic output exceeds that of both Wordsworth and Tennyson, and already comprises a rich variety of forms – sonnets, lyrics in trimeters and tetrameters, elegies, odes in 8–, 10–, or 12– line stanzas, blank verse and stress metre – and includes Collected Poems, 1958-2005; a 41,000-line epic poem in blank verse, Overlord; and over 300 odes, Classical Odes. He is responsible for the revival of verse drama, and his Collected Verse Plays include The Warlords, Prince Tudor, Ovid Banished and The Rise of Oliver Cromwell. He has pioneered a new short story form – the symbolic or miniature story – and his Collected Stories bring together five volumes, 1,001 stories in all.

In non-fiction, Nicholas Hagger has developed a new, civilizational view of history - see The Fire and the Stones and more recently The Light of Civilization and The Rise and Fall of Civilizations. He has challenged the coming world government in The Syndicate and its companion volume The Secret History of the West, which covers all the Western revolutions. He has connected his historical vision to the origin of America - see The Secret Founding of America; and to Iran – see The Last Tourist in Iran. He has created his own philosophy of “Universalism” (a system of ideas by which every element of human experience can be interpreted) and called for a revolution in thought and culture - see The Universe and the Light and The One and the Many. He has completed The New Philosophy of Universalism: The Infinite and the Law of Order. His autobiography, A Mystic Way, is unusual – unique perhaps – in its concentration on growth of the soul/poetic sensibility rather than the development of character.

His long-term goal is to present the universe, world history and human life in terms of the vision of reality that is central to his work. To this end, he has travelled widely and thought deeply about civilizations and the cosmos. All his works can be seen as an attempt to redeem the cultural wasteland of secular humanism, the outlook that sits like a blight on the art and literature of today. It therefore challenges the outlook of the literary Establishment.

Strangely Nicholas Hagger is better known internationally than in his own country. His biography appears in the International Who's Who of Authors and Writers and the International Who's Who in Poetry; in the Cambridge Blue Book, a prestigious compilation of the biographies of 4,000 people in numerous fields throughout the world picked for the excellence of their work; and in the Dictionary of International Biography.

Nicholas Hagger is best known as a man of letters. As his historical and philosophical ideas lie behind and inform his work as a literary author, in the interests of clarity it is desirable to present his history and philosophy first. His literary works and outlook as a man of letters, his main activity, will then be more understandable.

The Hagger canon can be grouped into the following seven categories of History, Philosophy, Lyric and Reflective Poetry, Epic Poetry, Verse Drama, Short Stories and Autobiography. There are plans for novels and novellas (short novels). Unpublished works are included. In what follows completed works are distinguished from those in an early stage. Publishers interested in publishing any of his works should contact the author by e-mail at info@nicholashagger.co.uk or write to him at PO Box 289, Loughton, Essex. IG10 4WD.