Nicholas Cooper

Born in England in 1950, I was perfectly poised to make the very most of the coming times that were to shape my destiny. Accepting the monochrome veneers that clumsily plastered over the deeper and sometimes darker mysteries of life was not going to be my style.

My first three years were spent in the midst of Betjeman's Metroland in Kenton, North London, where streets of carbon copy, semi-detached regularity aroused a sense of order on the one hand and the inclination to frustrate and destroy on the other.

Hot, summer days brought out the smell of evaporating urine from the acres of suburban concrete. But, it was people's gardens that intrigued most. For here, I learnt something of the human spirit and the assertion of the individual will over the mundane.

The green meadows of the Thames valley and a Thirties' detached with its long garden, high privet hedge and an air-raid shelter was the eventual backdrop to my formative years. Here would be absorbed the coming dramas of the cold war, a fading empire, assassination, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Most people's lives are punctuated by landmark events, which define their passage from cradle to grave — their wedding day, the birth of their children, the death of a parent or a good friend and the evolution of their careers.

How could it then be that one of my most defining moments was at the age of six, when I first heard Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel on the radio? The effect was akin to an awakening from the grey mist that enveloped my post-war world. I remember trying to explain what I had heard to my grandmother. Of course, she had no idea what I was talking about. Having no singing ability, that anyone could recognise, my attempts to emulate Elvis were therefore something of a pointless exercise.

In a world of Max Jaffa and Victor Sylvester, no one could imagine what this trip down "lonely street" was going to unleash. For my parents' generation, which was just grateful to be alive and to have a roof over its head, the old comforts were enough and Elvis was but an aberration; a blip in the continuity of the old order.

I had unwittingly been cast adrift on the River of Rock and destined never to disembark.

I was educated in Somerset at Queen's College, Taunton, before going on to art college in Guildford, Surrey and later Bristol.

In 1970, I was one of the few who successfully travelled overland all the way to India. There, I spent the best part of a year travelling the country and living with Tibetan refugees in Dharmsala, where I was privileged to have a private audience with the Dalai Lama.

On my return to England, I studied to be a teacher, then going on to work for some years in Illustration and Graphic Design. In 1988, I was appointed a college lecturer in Graphic Design, before taking early retirement in 2006.

Three years were spent renovating three village houses in the heart of Spain’s Andalucia, followed by five years in central Portugal, renovating a house, a cottage and clearing years of overgrown brambles from twenty-nine olive trees. 

I now live with my partner in the seaside town of Ramsgate, Kent, where I continue my writing and am returning to my first love of painting.

All extracts and artwork on this site are Copyright © Nicholas Cooper 2022.