Peter Marshall

Peter Marshall is a philosopher, historian, biographer, travel writer and poet. He has written sixteen highly acclaimed books which are being translated into fifteen different languages. His most recent book is the first part of his memoirs  Bognor Boy: How I Became an Anarchist (London: Zena, 2018).   It is a colourful and lyrical early memoir covering the period between 1946 and 1970.

His circumnavigation of Africa was made into a 6-part TV series and his voyage around Ireland into a BBC Radio series. He has written articles and reviews for many national newspapers and journals.Widely recognized as a bold and original thinker, Marshall has made a major contribution to fields as diverse as anarchism, ecology, alchemy and archaeology. He has been hailed by Resurgence magazine as one of the twenty five ‘visionary voices’ who have helped shape the new world view in the last quarter of a century. In his life and writings, he has tried to expand freedom and to help all beings realize their full potential.

Born on 23 August 1946 in Bognor Regis, England, a stone’s throw from the sea, Peter Hugh Marshall became a boarder at Steyning Grammar School in the Sussex Downs. He then sailed around the world as a purser cadet in the P & O-Orient Shipping Company before teaching English in Senegal, West Africa.

He returned to England to take a B.A.degree in English, French and Spanish from London University and an M.A. and a D.Phil. in the History of Ideas from Sussex University. He has taught philosophy and literature at several British universities and art schools.

In the 1970s Marshall was a founding member of a libertarian community in Buckinghamshire called Redfield. He went in 1980 with Jenny Zobel to Snowdonia in North Wales for a winter to finish his first book and stayed on for 21 years, first living in a remote cottage in the mountains and then down by the sea. He now lives on an organic smallholding in Devon with Elizabeth Ashton Hill. Apart from writing and growing fruit and vegetables, his great passion is sailing. He has two children, Emily and Dylan.

Marshall has been chairman of the Toussaint L’Ouverture Theatre Company and a trustee of the Tree Shepherds. He is now a member of the Society of Authors and an elected fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Titles by Peter

Introductions/Forewords by Peter

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from Peter

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Praise

“The most comprehensive and richly detailed work yet to appear on Godwin as thinker, writer, and person.”
—John P. Clark, The Tragedy of Common Sense

“An ambitious study that offers a thorough exploration of Godwin’s life and complex times.”
—Library Journal

“Marshall steers his course . . . with unfailing sensitivity and skill. It is hard to see how the task could have been better done.”
—Michael Foot, The Observer

“It brings back a thinker who was at once visionary and confident, and who had the good fortune to write when utopian ideas did not seem utopian.”
—David Bromwich, New York Times

“An absorbing biography . . . presenting a sympathetic portrait of a principled, embattled humanist. Peter Marshall describes these voluminous and multifaceted writings discerningly.”
—M.B. Freidman, Choice

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Praise

“Peter Marshall has produced the most useful modern account of Godwin’s life and now the most useful modern anthology of his writings. Marshall’s selection is sensible and valuable, bringing out the important points. . . . His introduction is a good summary of Godwin’s life and work. . . . Marshall is right to see him as ‘the most profound exponent of philosophical anarchism.’”
—Nicolas Walter, New Statesman

“A handsome and handy little book, excavating nuggets of Godwinian wisdom from the whole range of his writings.”
—Colin Ward, Times Educational Supplement

“An anarchist classic . . . with a valuable sketch of Godwin’s life and an interpretation of his work. Much of what Godwin says is obvious common sense.”
—Henry Geiger, Manas Journal

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Praise

“Demanding the Impossible is the book I always recommend when asked—as I often am—for something on the history and ideas of anarchism.”
—Noam Chomsky

“Attractively written and fully referenced…bound to be the standard history.”
—Colin Ward, Times Educational Supplement

“Large, labyrinthine, tentative: for me these are all adjectives of praise when applied to works of history, and Demanding the Impossible meets all of them.”
—George Woodcock, Independent

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Praise

“Brian Morris blazed a lot of trails. He is a scholar of genuine daring and great humanity, and his work deserves to be read and debated for a very long time to come.“
—David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“This is a marvelously original book bursting with new ideas. I have read it with enormous interest and admiration. This collection of essays is an outstanding contribution to anthropology, environmental thought, and anarchism.“
—Andrej Grubacic, professor and department chair in Anthropology and Social Change, California Institute of Integral Studies

“Before there was ’anarchist anthropology,’ there was Brian Morris. This collection introduces the work of an intrepid pioneer, taking anarchist perspectives to where you would least expect them.“
—Gabriel Kuhn, editor and translator of All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Liberating Society from the State and Other Writings by Erich Mühsam, and Revolution and Other Writings by Gustav Landauer

“Brian Morris’s scholarship is nothing if not compendious. . . . Morris’s achievement is formidable. His control of such a breadth of material is enviable, and his style is always lucid. He makes difficult work accessible. His prose conveys the unmistakable impression of a superb and meticulous lecturer at work.“
—Anthony P. Cohen, University of Edinburgh

“Morris’s acerbic analysis of established literature is matched by nuanced ethnographic analysis. . . . He writes accessibly about complicated matters.“
—Allen F. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles

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Praise

“Whether in Rojava, where women are fighting for their people’s survival, or in the loss and terror of New Orleans after the Katrina flood, Clark finds models of communality, care, and hope. Finely reasoned and integrative, tracing the dialectical play of institution and ethos, ideology and imaginary, this book will speak to philosophers and activists alike.”
—Ariel Salleh, author of Ecofeminism as Politics

“Clark presents very sophisticated philosophical concepts in a style that is quite comprehensible to the general public. Each page sheds new light on our age of planetary turbulence and demolishes all pseudo-truths about it.”
—Ronald Creagh, author of American Utopias

“John Clark’s book is a measured manifesto. It is a must read for any activist or scholar concerned with the alternatives to capitalism’s ongoing war on nature.”
—Andrej Grubačić, coauthor of Living at the Edges of Capitalism

“John Clark’s Between Earth and Empire is a guide to that which is obvious yet confoundingly obscure—namely, that models of social organization based in care and cooperation are infinitely more constructive and mutually beneficial than those based in competition and conquest.”
—Alyce Santoro, conceptual/sound artist and activist

“This book is a compass, polarized in the superlative subtropiques of the Gulf Coast, orienting cardinal points in the landscapes of the Zapatistas, the Black Panther Party, the Kurdish freedom movement, and West Papua. The diamantine dialectics of freedom breathing through the pages of this book will be a decisive factor in the final battles between earth and empire, between evolution and extinction. Which side are you on?”
—Quincy Saul, cofounder of Ecosocialist Horizons, and editor of Maroon Comix

Book Events

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Reviews

• Romantic Rationalist: A William Godwin Reader: A Review
• Demanding the Impossible: A Review
• Demanding the Impossible: A Publishers Weekly Review
• Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism: A Review
• Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism Book Review
• Demanding the Impossible on Powell’s Books Review-a-Day
• Demanding the Impossible in Time Out NY
• Demanding the Impossible in Perspectives on Terrorism
• Between Earth and Empire: A CHOICE Review
• Between Earth and Empire— Recommended book for EcoSocialists
• Between Earth and Empire in Foreword Reviews
• Anthropology, Ecology, and Anarchism: A Review

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Interviews

• John P. Clark on A Brief Chat with Jason Crane

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Mentions

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Blog

• A Sea Ethic
• Europe’s Lost Civilization: The Society of the Megalith Builders
• Midsummer at Stonehenge
• Patriotism and the Tidal Wave of Hatred
• The Architecture Of Oppression— By Peter Marshall
• Good For Some, Not For Others— By Peter Marshall
• Fight or Flee— By Peter Marshall
• Coronavirus— By Peter Marshall
• Brexit and the European Union
• Hippiedom and the New Society