Saturday, September 26, 2009

My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith



My hero: Edward Goldsmith




Saturday 26 September 2009 00.01 BST


My uncle Teddy died last month and I will miss him enormously. But his death is more than a personal blow.
Teddy was an early pioneer of the green movement. He launched the Ecologist magazine four decades ago, and his Blueprint for Survival was a defining document. It sold in huge numbers, and inspired countless young people to get involved. He helped set up the first green political party - People, which later became the Green party.
Teddy's slogan was "No deserts in Suffolk", and to capture people's attention, he recruited a camel. He lost his deposit, and in a bizarre twist was chased by a paper-waving official who accused him of animal cruelty, citing the effects on the camel of breathing in car fumes. "That's exactly my point," Teddy declared. "Imagine what it's doing to us!"
Today we're all green. But when Teddy started out, he was virtually alone. His was a decision to stand apart from his peers, risk marginalisation and even ridicule. But he never minded. When he was described by an Italian bishop as "the anti-Christ", he was flattered. When President Suharto of Indonesia labelled him an "enemy of the state", he wore it as a badge of honour. The insults went on and on, and he relished them all.
Part of the reason was that he was hard to pigeonhole. In some ways he was conservative; he had huge respect for traditional societies and he hated change. When I introduced glossy paper to the Ecologist, he thought it was outlandish. But he was also radical and courageous. Whenever the Ecologist was sent legal threats, his reaction was always the same: "Bring it on!"
Near the end of his life, Teddy said; "If in some small way I've helped to slow the runaway juggernaut that we've created, or make people aware of it, that has to be a good thing." He did more than that. He was responsible, perhaps more than anyone else, for waking us up from our collective slumber. He will remain a hero of mine, and if we survive the crisis, he will be revered by many, many others.



2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016

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