The British Timothy Leary?
We’re delighted to trace the Somers Town footsteps of 1970s countercultural figure Robin Farquharson. Author of ‘International Freak‘ Syd Rosen is walking in Robin’s footsteps on Saturday 22nd – so book now for tickets.
Meet at the museum for this one-off event – walk and Book Launch.
Robin Farquharson (1930-1973) was a visionary mathematician turned crusader for countercultural change. Though born in South Africa, Farquharson spent most of his adult life in London. Amongst assorted fantastic and fantastical projects he campaigned against apartheid, wrote a unique memoir of queer street life, and co-founded the Mental Patients Union.
Farquharson was also one of the most visible squatters in the streets of Somers Town, leaving an indelible imprint on the legendary Charrington Street squat and even establishing his own anti-university.
Farquharson’s extraordinary life was recently the subject of International Freak by M. Syd Rosen, who also oversaw the re-release of Farquharson’s memoir Drop Out!.
Join Rosen for a guided walk around Farquharson’s Somers Town. Along the way we’ll hear more about the streets that shaped Farquharson’s work, discuss the highs and lows of life in a 70s squat, and learn about the mysterious fire which cost Farquharson his life.
Saturday 22nd from 2pm
A ‘mesmerising, fastidiously researched biography’ – the Guardian
‘A wild headrush of a biography that captures the chaos, madness and energy of the London psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.’ – John Higgs
‘Robin Farquharson lived on the margins and might have dropped below memory’s horizon altogether had he not found, in Rosen, an ebullient and riveting chronicler.’ – Marina Warner
‘Vastly well researched, skilfully assembled and elegantly written, M. Syd Rosen’s book has made good the omission. I have written two books on the era. I wish this had been one of them.’ – Jonathon Green
As the Guardian review states:
“Syd Rosen, who co-founded Jargon – a project devoted to forgotten and fringe aspects of the Jewish diaspora – first heard about Farquharson from a random drinker in a London pub. “I was drawn to the story and repulsed by it,” he writes. Considering his subject’s vagrant life and the fact that the Cambridge college that holds material about him will not release it because it is “too distressing”, he has done remarkably well to reconstruct the peripatetic adventures of a “crazed scholar”, someone “on a trip without a ticket”, a cultural precog who channelled and was eventually devoured by the roiling energies of his age. “I adumbrated vast enterprises,”
Saturday 22nd August, 2pm
People’s Museum
52 Phoenix Road, NW1 1ES
PRESS RELEASE:
‘Robin Farquharson lived on the margins and might have dropped below memory’s horizon altogether had he
not found, in Rosen, an ebullient and riveting chronicler.’ – Marina Warner
‘A wild headrush of a biography that captures the chaos, madness and energy of the London psychedelic
counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.’ – John Higgs
‘Rosen is an intergenerational talent. That is, he seems to move effortlessly across decades, from dark matter
to illumination; gleaning, recovering, challenging, making new.’ – Iain Sinclair
Under the gaze of the secret police and his own mounting paranoia,
Robin Farquharson became one of Swinging London’s most
mysterious figures—until flames ripped through his Camden squat an
the so-called dropout doctor was gone.
Born into privilege in apartheid South Africa, Farquharson had once
been known as a pioneering theorist of tactical voting. After a phone
call from God brought everything crashing down, Farquharson
abandoned academia and set about trying to become a countercultural guru. To some he was a visionary. To others he was a fantasist. Jumping from one outrageous scheme to another, he soon earned the dubious title of “international freak”.
With cameos from the likes of Rupert Murdoch and R. D. Laing,
International Freak marshals an extraordinary cast of characters in order to tell Farquharson’s story for the first time. Equal parts experimental biography, social history, and psychedelic true crime, International Freak is a portrait of a singular man and the world he sought desperately to transform.
Key information:
‣ Before his breakdown, Farquharson played a key role in having apartheid South Africa banned from the
Olympic Games
Farquharson established his own anti-university, recorded a tribute song to Leila Khaled, co-founded the
Mental Patients Union, and was an influential squatter
‣ Farquharson was the author of Drop Out!, a cult memoir of queer street life. International Freak is published
alongside a new edition of Farquharson’s book, which has been out of print for fifty years.
About Syd:
M. Syd Rosen lives in London, where he writes about fame, fantasy, and radical politics. He is the author of International Freak: Robin Farquharson and the Dream of Psychedelic Revolt (Strange Attractor Press, 2026) and the editor of Harry Fainlight’s collected poems, forthcoming with New York Review Books. Alongside his writing, Rosen is the co-founder of Jargon, a non-profit dedicated to diasporic culture.