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John May
John has spent his life under the radar and out of the spotlight – which is not to say he hasn’t been busy.
A lifelong freelance author, editor, producer and writer, working solo or with others, he has produced 18 books, edited many magazines and has written many hundreds of features for major newspapers and mainstream magazines.
He is Google’s Number 1 Generalist on the web, due to the worldwide audience for his blog ‘The Generalist’ which he has been writing for 16 years, producing more than 920 posts on a very wide range of subjects, combining reviews with investigative reports, interviews and features, all with a strong visual element.
He has had lunch with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Al Gore, tea with William Burroughs, been in a dubbing studio in Mayfair with Steven Spielberg and in a milk bar in Modesto with George Lucas – just a few headline encounters from hundreds of great audio interviews.
One of life’s little organisers and librarians, his Archive also contains a detailed record of 40+ years of his working life.
A treasure trove of historic material, The Archive has been judged by a professional archiving firm to be:
‘A key repository of information about popular culture from the 1960s to the 2000s.’
‘John has assiduously collected material throughout his life – ranging from early documentation of Glastonbury Fayre and the Isle of Wight festival, through lay-outs and working papers for magazines and books, to tapes and transcripts of interviews. He has also assiduously collected clippings files on key topics such as ‘the Beats’ and ‘Drug Culture.’
‘This archive contains many amazing individual items, but its value is as a whole, charting the zeitgeist.’
John has consistently been involved in movements for social change. He wrote the official history of Greenpeace and ran their international publishing operation for seven years. He produced one of the first ever Animal Liberation magazines (‘The Beast’) and many anti-nuclear papers, articles and books. A pioneering environmental journalist, he also worked with the Bhopal Medical Appeal, the Big Issue and many other causes. He was one of the team behind the Lewes Arms dispute, the biggest pub protest in modern British history.
When not causing trouble,
John is a poetic scribbler, a semi-professional musician and songwriter, a part-time painter and a dedicated photographer.
