The English Assassin
Read The English Assassin Online
Authors: Michael Moorcock
A NOMAD OF THE TIME STREAMS
The Warlord of the Air
The Land Leviathan
The Steel Tsar
THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES
The Eternal Champion
Phoenix in Obsidian
The Dragon in the Sword
THE CORUM SERIES
The Knight of the Swords
The Queen of the Swords
The King of the Swords
The Bull and the Spear
The Oak and the Ram
The Sword and the Stallion
THE CORNELIUS QUARTET
The Final Programme
A Cure for Cancer
The Condition of Muzak
(May 2016)
THE MICHAEL MOORCOCK LIBRARY
Elric of Melniboné
Elric: Sailor on the Seas of Fate
MICHAEL MOORCOCK’S ELRIC
Volume 1: The Ruby Throne
Volume 2: Stormbringer
The English Assassin
Print edition ISBN: 9781783291816
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291809
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First Titan edition: April 2016
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © Michael and Linda Moorcock, 1972, and Multiverse Inc. Revised version copyright © Michael and Linda Moorcock, 2016, and Multiverse Inc. All characters, the distinctive likenesses thereof, and all related indicia are TM and © 2016 Michael and Linda Moorcock and Multiverse Inc.
Edited by John Davey.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN
A ROMANCE OF ENTROPY
Illustrated by Mal Dean,
Harry Douthwaite and Jill Riches
Original artwork, by Richard Glyn Jones,
withdrawn by artist
For Arthur and Max Moorcock
Dedicated to the memories of Peregrine Worsthorne, Malcolm Muggeridge, Dennis Hopper, Shirley Temple, George Steiner, Angus Maude, Robert Conquest, Bernard Braden, Spiro Agnew, Christiaan Barnard, Norman St John Stevas, Colin Wilson, Lord Longford, Rap Brown, John Wayne, Jerry Rubin, Chris Booker, Robert Heinlein, Sam Peckinpah, Miroslav Moc, Kingsley Amis, Sir Arthur Bryant, Richard Neville and all men of good will and Jolly Englishmen everywhere.
Many of the newspaper quotations used here might cause further distress to parents and relatives of the deceased if they read them. Therefore I have in some cases changed the names. No other part of the quotation has been altered.
Also Available from Titan Books
(commencement)
As a child I lived in that well-kept back garden of London, the county of Surrey. In this century, at least, Surrey achieved vitality only once. That was during the World War when the incendiaries fell, and the Messerschmidts blew up, and the V-bombs dropped suddenly from the silent sky. Night flames, droning planes, banging ack-ack, shrapnel and bombed buildings are the happiest impressions from my childhood. I long to find them again. The pylon, the hoarding, the ruined street and the factory are images which to this day most satisfy and pacify my psyche. I was very happy then, while the world fought its war and my own parents quarrelled, suppressed quarrels and finally parted. The War was won, the Family lost, and I remained, as far as I knew, content. But now, with great effort, I recall the nightmares, rages, weeping fits and traumas, the schools which came and went, and I know that, after the war, I was only happy when alone and then chiefly when I was able to create a complicated fantasy or, in a book, enter someone else’s. I was happy but, I suppose, I was not healthy. Few of my illnesses were not psychosomatic and I became fat. Poor child.
* * *
… I suspect that many people experience this nostalgia and would dearly love to recreate the horrifying circumstances of their own childhood. But this is not possible. At best they produce reasonable alternatives.
—Maurice Lescoq,
Leavetaking
, 1961
A young North Kensington addict who had made an attempt to give up drugs was killed by his addiction, the Westminster Coroner decided last week. Anthony William Leroy (sometimes known as Anthony Gray) died at St Charles Hospital in the early hours of August 29, after taking two shots of heroin in his arm when he was found, the coroner was told. Leroy was a boutique manager … Professor Donald Teare, pathologist, said that there were two recent injection marks on Leroy’s right arm. Cause of death was inhalation of vomit due to drug addiction.
Kensington Post
, 26 September, 1969
South of Bude and its neighbour, Widemouth Bay, you come to the quaint little harbour of Boscastle, with its grey stone, slate roofed cottages and background of sheltering hills, and thence to Tintagel, home of the legendary King Arthur and the famous cliff-top ruins of his mediaeval castle. Although other counties in the West may dispute Cornwall’s claim to be the sole possessor of the original authentic stronghold of the Knights of the Round Table, Cornishmen stick as closely to their time-honoured contention as the limpets to the rocky, sea-washed walls of Merlin’s mysterious cave at the foot of the great granite cliff. It is the blood spilt by the magic sword Excalibur, they insist, that keeps a small lawn of turf within the precincts of the castle forever emerald green, as if constantly fed by spring water where none exists. And what else, they ask, was Camelot if it were not the old name for Camelford, the little inland town on the River Camel not half a day’s horse-trot away?
Cornwall: A Tourist’s Guide
* * *
Some time ago, possibly in the winter of 1975, the following events took place at Tintagel Bay on the north coast of Cornwall:
Tintagel’s bay is small and walled by high, bleak cliffs, a natural subject for romantic painters and poets of the past two centuries. Most of the castle ruins stand on the inland cliff, but some are on the west cliff, which is a narrow promontory now crumbling dramatically into the sea and carrying the ruins with it.
Though, in the summer, Tintagel is a great tourist attraction, at other seasons it is virtually deserted, save for a few local inhabitants who remain in the village some distance inland. One dull December morning two of these residents, a butcher and a retired chemist, who had been born and brought up in the area, were taking their regular stroll along the cliffs when they paused, as usual, among the ruins and rested on a wooden bench provided for people like themselves who wished to enjoy the view of the bay in comfort.