Welcome to the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES of

PORTRAITS –

Power and Glory vis-à-vis Form and Contentment

by John O’Loughlin of Centretruths Digital Media

 

 

Links to the files of which follow the brief introduction below:-

 

Comprising thirty-three biographical sketches of some of the twentieth-century's most influential and powerful people in both politics and the arts, including Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, de Valera, Mussolini, de Gaulle, Ben-Gurian, André Malraux, Bertrand Russell, Salvador Dali, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Aldous Huxley, Portraits (1985) seeks to provoke as well as to praise, and should prove of interest to those who are curious to learn how various exceptional men - and one exceptional woman - measure up to a Social Transcendentalist analysis or, more correctly, to the scrutiny of someone who approaches life from a specific ideological standpoint with a view to measuring the achievements of others in relation to it.  Although I had dealt with some of the subjects, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Aldous Huxley, before (see Becoming and Being), my treatment of them here is much more subjectively critical and thus a reflection, in large measure, of the way my thinking had progressed during the intervening three years since the earlier excursion into biography, which, characteristic of a more relativistic approach to literature typifying me at that time, also embraced a series of autobiographical sketches.  No such relativity applies here, however, although the choice of both politicians and artists is anything but absolutist, as suggested by the subtitle. – John O’Loughlin.

 

 

CONTENTS

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

ARTHUR KOESTLER

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

NORMAN MAILER

ADOLF HITLER

JOSEF STALIN

EAMON DE VALERA

BENITO MUSSOLINI

CHARLES DE GAULLE

ANDRE MALRAUX

ALBERT CAMUS

LAWRENCE DURRELL

ANTHONY BURGESS

JAMES JOYCE

EZRA POUND

T.S. ELIOT

OSWALD SPENGLER

BERTRAND RUSSELL

J.B. PRIESTLEY

KENNETH CLARK

HERBERT READ

SALVADOR DALI

FRANCISCO FRANCO

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

V.I. LENIN

DAVID BEN-GURIAN

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

ALDOUS HUXLEY

THOMAS MANN

WILHELM REICH

CARL JUNG

W.B. YEATS

 

All files Copyright © 1985-2011 John O’Loughlin

 

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PORTRAITS

 

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TEXT LINKS

 

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Weblogs on MySpace

 

 

 

Email: john-oloughlin@centretruths.co.uk

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of mixed Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split due to ethnic and other incompatibilities (they called her 'Mary Aldershot'), he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay following the death of her British-based husband) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot and, following the death and repatriation of his Irish-born grandmother, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE’s (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE’s (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, including ill-health, and proceeded to dedicate himself to a literary vocation which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late '80s and early '90s, he has effectively continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Fixed Limits (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), An Interview Reviewed (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Secret Exchanges (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and False Pretences (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin has exclusively dedicated himself to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical nature, including Devil and God – The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), Philosophical Truth (1991-2) and, more recently, The Best of All Possible Worlds (2008) and The Centre of Truth (2009). John O'Loughlin has continued, since 1974, to live at various addresses in Crouch End and Hornsey, north London, but would like, one day, to return to Ireland.

 

Copyright © 2011 Centretruths Digital Media

 

 

 

 

 

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