Under the Black Hat | Bonar Thompson & Trevor Blake (ed)
Published by mogtus-sanlux ISBN: 978-1-944651-41-1 $16.50 6 x 9", 180 pp., paperback, matte cover “It may be necessary to acquaint some readers with the fact that I am a rather well-known Hyde Park speaker, of an exceptional and as yet unclassified kind, and that I have filled this place in the national life for a considerable length of time. It is not a dignified place, nor a lucrative one, but I have filled it because it pleased me to do so.” — Bonar Thompson, The Black Hat The black hat was more than Thompson’s emblem. It was a warning label. Beneath it stood an Irish-born Hyde Park orator of “an exceptional and as yet unclassified kind”: freethinker, anti-militarist, comic egotist, pamphleteer, and professional disturber of mental furniture. Under the Black Hat is one of three balanced collections of Thompson’s writings, edited and introduced by Trevor Blake. There is no strict sequence to the volumes, no ladder of initiation, no respectable program to complete. Each book offers a full measure of Thompson: his wit, his vanity, his contempt for cant, and his refusal to become useful to any faction for too long. Those who know Thompson from Hyde Park Orator Illustrated will find here more of the same dangerous charm: a man talking from the margin as though the center had been badly misinformed. Those meeting him for the first time should be warned that he is not dignified, not lucrative, and not easily forgotten. Also available as part of a discounted three-volume Bonar Thompson bundle.