Fear and loathing turned intellectual giant into a literary sideshow

AT THE same time as Pope John Paul II was struggling to hang on to his life in Rome, another famous man was putting paid to his life in the USA. Using a gun. Also a telephone, but we’ll come to that later.

First of all, the idolators went to work. The man who invented gonzo journalism was dead. Hunter S Thompson had shot himself. End of an era. The great iconoclast refused to surrender to the indignities of old age. What courage. Way to go, Hunter S.

A wave of nostalgia for the ’60s swept over many people on both sides of the Atlantic. Oh, the ’60s, those questioning rebellious days of flowers in our hair, peace in our hearts, drugs in our veins and sex everywhere. Those days when the guidebooks for living were written by Timothy Leary, Tom Wolfe or Hunter S Thompson.