Biography
Michell was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He did national service in the Royal Navy, during which time he qualified as a Russian translator at the Joint Services School for Linguists. He then worked for a while as an estate agent in London. In 1966 one of his properties, the basement of his own residence, became the base of the London Free School. The Black Power activist Michael X, having previously run a gambling club in the basement, had now become active in the organisation of the LFS and brought Michell into counter-culture activities. Michell began to offer courses in UFOs and ley lines.
His first book, The Flying Saucer Vision, was published in 1967. At this time Michell took the view that "an imminent revelation of literally inconceivable scope" was at hand, and that the appearance of UFOs was linked to "the start of a new phase in our history". In 1969 he published The View Over Atlantis, a book which explored Alfred Watkins's concept that an ancient system of ley lines linked together megaliths and monuments from the distant past. Gary Lachman states that the book "put Glastonbury on the countercultural map." Ronald Hutton describes it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". By the late 1960s Michell was closely associated with members of the Rolling Stones.
In the 1980s Michell was a member of the Lindisfarne Association and a teacher at its School of Sacred Architecture. He lectured at the Kairos Foundation, an "educational charity specifically founded to promote the recovery of traditional values in the Arts and Sciences". He was for some years a visiting lecturer at the Prince of Wales' School of Traditional Arts.
From 1997 he wrote a monthly column of humour, philosophy and social commentary in The Oldie magazine, an anthology of which was published in 2005 as Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist.
In 1964 Michell fathered a son, Jason Goodwin, who also became a writer. The relationship with Goodwin's mother did not last. His son did not meet his father until 1992, at the age of 28. In 2007 Michell was married to Denise Price, the Archdruidess of the Glastonbury Order of Druids. The marriage was brief.
Read more about this topic: John Michell (writer)
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