FIRSTS ONLINE Winter 2020

12. NEVILLE, Richard
Hippie Hippie Shake
London: Bloomsbury, 1995
8vo, pp. 376. Original purple boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated
endpapers and dustwrapper. 24pp. of b&w and colour photographs.Corners
a little bumped, but a near fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with just a
little edgewear.
First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO TONY PALMER,
FILM MAKER AND AUTHOR OF THE TRIALS OF OZ: ‘Much love +
memories for Tony Palmer from Richard Neville 1998’.
In 1967 Richard Neville [1941-2016] founded Oz, the infamous
underground magazine which had never stayed underground enough for
the Establishment’s liking. (The magazine’s graphic designer was Neville’s
close friend Martin Sharp, the designer of this book’s dustwrapper.) The
May 1970 issue of Oz was edited by schoolchildren (one of whom was
Charles Shaar Murray), and featured images of a priapic Rupert the
Bear. The result was prosecution, and the Oz trial became one of the
longest -- and certainly one of the silliest -- obscenity trials in British
legal history.
The writer and film maker Tony Palmer had first met Neville in 1968
when, as producer of the BBC show How It Is, Palmer had recruited
him as co-presenter of the show. (The other presenter was John Peel.)
Palmer attended the Oz trial every day as both supporter and researcher,
and wrote The Trials Of Oz, published in 1971. This copy of Neville’s
autobiography is inscribed to Palmer, more than twenty-five years after
the Oz publishers were (eventually) acquitted.
A wonderful association copy, bearing witness to an enduring friendship.
£350
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