Stuart Holroyd (born 10 August 1933) is a British writer.''Contemporary Authors'' (Thomson Gale, 1 January 2004) Born in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

, he first came to prominence for the philosophical and critical works produced during his close association with the writers

Colin Wilson Colin Henry Wilson (26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013) was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his phil ...

and Bill Hopkins, but has since written prolifically on

parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena ( extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related t ...

, contacts with

extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might ...

, sexual love and other topics.

Life

The son of Thomas Holroyd and Edith (King) Holroyd, Stuart Holroyd attended

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(1957–58) but left without completing his degree. He published his first book, '' Emergence from Chaos'', in 1957 at the age of twenty-three. The same publisher,

Victor Gollancz Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian. Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Chris ...

, had recently published '' The Outsider'', the first book by Holroyd's friend

. Wilson and Holroyd, along with the novelist Bill Hopkins, were associated with the literary movement known as the

Angry Young Men The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis; other popular figures included Jo ...

. In the same year, Holroyd, Wilson and Hopkins each contributed an essay to '' Declaration'' – an anthology of statements by writers and artists then labelled, rightly or wrongly, as

(the contributors included not only

John Osborne John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his prose that criticized established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play '' Look Back in Anger'' tr ...

and

Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social ...

but

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

and the director

Lindsay Anderson Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for ...

). On 9 March 1958, Holroyd's play, ''The Tenth Chance'' was produced at the

Royal Court Theatre The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England ...

; disturbances in the audience during the single performance, and a subsequent confrontation in a nearby public house involving Kenneth Tynan, Christopher Logue and

were widely reported. ''Emergence from Chaos'' was a literary/psychological study of several modern poets. Holroyd's next book, ''Flight and Pursuit'' (1959) was an autobiographical examination of the author's search for "spiritual values". In 1961, Holroyd married Susan Joy Bennett. (He was earlier married to Anne Elizabeth Freeman, they married in 1950 and divorced in 1958.) With the exception of a textbook on English literature (''The English Imagination''), Holroyd did not publish another book for sixteen years. ''Contraries; A Personal Progression'', which appeared in 1975, was a memoir of the "angry" years of the late 1950s, containing portraits of

Wilson Wilson may refer to: People *Wilson (name) ** List of people with given name Wilson ** List of people with surname Wilson * Wilson (footballer, 1927–1998), Brazilian manager and defender * Wilson (footballer, born 1984), full name Wilson R ...

and

Hopkins Hopkins is an English, Welsh and Irish patronymic surname. The English name means "son of Hob". ''Hob'' was a diminutive of ''Robert'', itself deriving from the Germanic warrior name ''Hrod-berht'', translated as "renowned-fame". The Robert spe ...

. Holroyd thereafter turned his attention to different subjects, writing a series of books on the

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Not ...

, encounters with extraterrestrial life,

gnosticism Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

and the philosophy of Krishnamurti—work which he later described as "whoring" in the literary market place.''His Dear Time's Waste'', Pronoia, 2013: introduction, His publication, ''His Dear Time's Waste'' (Pronoia Books, 2013) is described as "a 1950s literary and love life memoir," a re-issue of the amended text of ''Contraries'', with substantial additions derived from journals, correspondence and other early writings, together with reflections from a present point of view.

Bibliography

Books

* '' Emergence from Chaos'' (1957) * ''Flight and Pursuit'' (1959) * ''The English Imagination'' (1969) * ''Contraries: A Personal Progression'' (1975) * ''Dream Worlds'' (1976) * ''PSI and the Consciousness Explosion'' (1977) * ''Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth'' (1977) * ''Mysteries of the Inner Self'' (1978) * ''Alien Intelligence'' (1979) * ''Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth'' (1979) * With Susan Holroyd ''The Complete Book of Sexual Love'' (1979) * ''Quest of the Quiet Mind'' (1980) * ''Krishnamurti: The Man, the Mystery & the Message'' (1991) * ''The Elements of Gnosticism'' ( Element Books Ltd. 1994) * ''His Dear Time's Waste'' (2013)

Plays

* ''The Tenth Chance'' (1958)

Critical essays

* "A Sense of Crisis" in '' Declaration'' (Edited by Tom Maschler, MacGibbon & Kee, 1957) * "Revolt and Commitment: Thoughts at Twenty-Five" in '' Encounter'', April 1959

Books about

* "Stuart Holroyd: Years of Anger and Beyond" by Antoni Diller. Nottingham: Paupers' Press, 2012. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holroyd, Stuart 1933 births Living people Parapsychologists Writers from Bradford English writers on paranormal topics 21st-century English writers 20th-century English non-fiction writers