Play Power by Richard Neville

A trawl through the international Underground movements of the sixties – anecdotes, personalities, festivals, overland from Australia to London – with Johan Huizinga’s ‘Homo Ludens’ (1938) along as a guide; ‘Headopoly’ game (banned in Australia at time of first publication) folded and laid in at rear, ready to play.

Little should need saying  about the importance of Richard Neville as a legendary counter culture trouble maker.

This book, published in 1970,  is a classic of the era, not least for it’s splendid Martin Sharp designed cover and the Barney Bubbles Headoploy game (often missing & removed from exports to his native Australia) inside the back cover.

Published in the summer of 1970, Playpower was the work of Australian hippie entrepreneur and writer, Richard Neville. He was the publisher of OZ magazine (1967-73), which, in May 1970, published the infamous Schoolkids Issue that led to the trial of OZ editors Richard Neville, Felix Dennis, and Jim Anderson, at the Old Bailey under Judge Michael Argyle. It was the longest trial under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. The defendants were found guilty and sentenced to up to 15 months imprisonment. This was later quashed on appeal by the lord chief justice Lord Widgery. The politics of play. The strategy which converts the Underground to a brotherhood of clowns; the lifestyle which unites a generation in love and laughter.In Chicago, its Pigasus the pig for President and Abbie Hoffman throwing kisses to a bewildered jury. In Nanterre its a horse nominated by students for local councillor…In Keele, it’s students celebrating the unusual sun by frolicking naked on the campus…The politics of play.