The Collection Was Not Enough: The Brilliant Writing of Bonar Thompson

Yobbery Under Arms / Pearls of Cut Price / Under the Black Hat
Published by mogtus-sanlux
Edited and introduced by Trevor Blake
Three paperbacks, 6 x 9", 180 pp. each, matte covers

Bonar Thompson’s writings have been gathered here in three modest, balanced volumes, each readable on its own and in any order. Together with his autobiography, Hyde Park Orator Illustrated, these books constitute the complete works of Bonar Thompson’s writing as now collected: the life, the speeches, the essays, the barbs, the boasts, the recollections, and the printed mischief of a man who could not be made useful to any faction for very long.

Thompson was born in County Antrim, educated by appetite and argument, and made famous as one of Hyde Park’s great unlicensed voices. He was a conscientious objector, prisoner, pamphleteer, editor, broadcaster, performer, and comic egoist of the first rank. He passed through causes without becoming their property and spoke to crowds without flattering democracy’s opinion of itself.

Taken together, Yobbery Under Arms, Pearls of Cut Price, and Under the Black Hat restore Thompson as he deserves to be encountered: various, vain, funny, sharp, politically inconvenient, and gloriously unclassified. Readers who want the full Bonar Thompson should also add Hyde Park Orator Illustrated, his extraordinary autobiography, to complete the set.