Nicholas Hagger – författare

These stories serve as an introduction to Nicholas Hagger's five volumes totalling 1,001 stories (an echo of The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights). They are grouped in two parts which reflect the two aspects of the fundamental theme of world literature outlined in his A New Philosophy of Literature: 'Follies and Vices' and 'Quest for the One'. These stories condemn follies and vices in relation to an implied virtue - more than 150 vices are listed in a Preface - and present moments of heightened consciousness in which the universe is perceived as a unity.

Since 1945 the UN has failed to prevent 162 wars and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and there is talk of a Third World War involving the Middle East, the Baltic states and North Korea. Competing nation-states seem powerless to achieve world peace under the UN. Continuing a tradition that began with the 1945 atomic bombs, Nicholas Hagger follows Truman, Einstein, Churchill, Eisenhower, Gandhi, Russell, J.F. Kennedy and Gorbachev in calling for a democratic, partly-federal World State with sufficient authority to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty, and solve the world’s financial and environmental problems. In World State Hagger sets out the historical background and the failure of the current political order of nation-states. He presents the ideal World State - its seven federal goals, its structure and the benefits it would bring - and sets out a manifesto that would turn the UN General Assembly into an elected lower house of a democratic World State.

The Algorithm of Creation is the last of Nicholas Hagger’s quartet on the unity of the universe and humankind, and follows The Universe and the Light (1993), The One and the Many (1999) and The New Philosophy of Universalism (2009). It offers an algebraic formula written out for him by Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Japan’s T.S. Eliot, in Tokyo in October 1965, that sums up the wisdom of the East: “+A + –A = 0.” Based on ancient Chinese thinking, yin (dark) + yang (light) = the Tao, it shows all opposites reconciled in the underlying unity of the One Void whose emptiness is also a fullness. During a dinner at a conference of leading scientists at Jesus College, Cambridge in September 1992, watched by Nobel physics prizewinner Roger Penrose, Hagger reversed the formula to 0 = +A + –A when he wrote down the maths for his view of the origin and creation of the universe and showed the first two particles emerging from the Void’s singularity, influenced by the 1992 discovery of ripples in the cosmic microwave background radiation and the Presocratic Anaximander of Miletus. In this work Hagger shows how this algebraic formula has worked as a universal algorithm, 0 = +A + –A = 0. Its many variations have acted as rules that have controlled the creation and development of the expanding universe, its evolution and the rise of human history, religion and science, and its ultimate fate. The formula is behind many of Hagger’s works, and his application of this algorithm to all human knowledge of the universe and all disciplines takes him to a first-ever Theory of Everything, which is set out at the end: the algorithm of Creation containing 100 mathematical symbols (reflecting all the variations) that can be summed up in the above algorithm. This startling achievement has been made possible by his Universalist cross-disciplinary approach which focuses on the fundamental oneness of the universe and humankind, and the unitive vision.

When he was ten Nicholas Hagger’s dentist, Howard Carter’s brother, told him about the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and he was later given a shawabti (funerary figurine) of Tutankhamun that came from the tomb. As a teenager he was fascinated by the Great Pyramid, and in 1963 he wrote ‘The Riddle of the Great Pyramid’ as a parable for our time. Written as a report by an official living at Giza during the construction in progress in c.2600BC, it explains the massive organisation and endeavour that has gone into the building so far when those involved in the work do not know its purpose or why it is being built. The notion of the Great Pyramid as a symbol of bafflement and a microcosm of Western society has haunted Hagger throughout his working life. After visiting it in 2005 he wrote a sequel by the same official, ‘The Meaning and Purpose of the Great Pyramid’, which carries the story forward, and after another visit in 2020 he wrote ‘The Great Pyramid as a House of Eternity’, which completed a Pyramid trilogy. These three reports, which have followed research into the building of the Great Pyramid for 57 years, are now brought out together with illustrations that throw light on the events described and reveal the Pharaoh’s face on the Sphinx. Collectively they offer a factual account of the construction soon after 2600BC and the aspirations of humans seeking a life beyond death before the birth of the established religions, and as parables in the tradition of Swift, they profoundly question the modern world of work and organisation of Western society. They present a quest for eternity that is also a self-aggrandising folly at the beginning of recorded history, and illustrate the dialectic between a quest for Reality and condemnation of follies and vices that Hagger identified as the fundamental theme of world literature in A New Philosophy of Literature.

In this remarkable memoir Nicholas Hagger reflects on war and peace and on 'peace for our time', Chamberlain’s haunting words in 1938 that ushered in the Second World War. Peace then turned out to be an illusion shattered by the outbreak of hostilities. Will world peace again turn out to be an illusion? With a lightness of touch Nicholas Hagger addresses the burning issue of our time - whether a new world structure can avert a new world war - and unveils a vision of a better, safer world for our grandchildren. This stimulating work will fascinate and inspire a new generation looking beyond nation-state self-interest to world unity.

Nicholas Hagger�s Collected Poems�contained 30 volumes of his poems, and Life Cycle and Other New Poems�contained volumes 31�34. Together they reflect his quest along the Mystic Way, and the vision of unity and harmony to which it led. The Oak Tree and the Branch�contains volumes 35�41 and continues his presentation of apparent conflicts (Brexit, coronavirus, war and extreme suffering) and the underlying unity of the universe within his Arcadia. The Oak Tree and the Branch�sees the UK�s departure from Europe as a lopped branch from the Tree of Tradition of European civilisation. The Tapestry�dwells on his rootedness in the past, especially in the Tudor time. A Plague in Arcadia: Oneness with Nature and the Universe�presents a host of Nature poems in his local Fairmead�s Arcadian paradise during the spread of coronavirus, the Covid plague. An Oval Cloud�presents a sequence of encounters with an oval cloud seen behind his closed eyes, which he tries to understand. Court Poems: More Royal Classical Odes�includes Royal events: a wedding, two funerals and a coronation, and another lopped branch. In Arcady: A Gong and Padded Stick�surveys his Providential life. And the harrowing Agony in Arcady: Stroke�wrings from him the whole range of emotions as he comes to terms with his daughter�s severe stroke (another lopped branch) and heroic endurance. Hagger�s mystical vision of the unity of Nature, the universe and humankind shines through all these new poems. Hagger derives his inspiration from the 16th- and 17th-century Metaphysical poets and seeks to unite the later Augustan and Romantic traditions. These poems reconcile the soul�s harmony with the universe and the conflicts in public life, and add significantly to the themes of Collected Poems, Classical Odes, Life Cycle�and Hagger�s two poetic epics, Overlord�and Armageddon, all published by O-Books. They carry forward his Universalist approach to poetry which unveils an ordered universe behind the apparent chaos of world events

The Still Brimming Twilit River�is volume 7 of Nicholas Hagger�s Collected Stories�and follows The First Dazzling Chill of Winter/ (2016), which dealt with impending old age. The 1,202 short stories in the previous six volumes cover six decades (from the 1960s to the 2010s) in the life of Philip Rawley. This seventh volume covers a seventh decade and contains 220 more stories and deals with his defiance of growing old. Philip Rawley�s attitude is akin to Tennyson�s Ulysses who, despite the infirmities of old age, is ready to 'sail beyond the sunset and the baths/Of all the western stars'�in search of new experience and new adventures. These mini-stories present a range of characters from a stable society. A number of these characters reappear in other stories, and are presented with their strengths, follies and flaws in different situations. The stories offer a complete literary experience in a page or two, and their brevity is innovatory. The combination of opposites in their vivid titles derives inspiration from the 17th century: Dr Johnson�s definition of the wit of the Metaphysical poets as 'a combination of dissimilar images'�in which 'the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together'�(�Life of Cowley�). These stories are verbal paintings and present an image in action with a poet�s eye for significant detail. Hagger�s stories are imagistic, economical and vivid in clean prose and reflect the Age. They contain memorable images and studies of character. They are ideal for short concentration spans, reading on journeys or in bed. They drop into the consciousness like stones and leave the mind to reflect on the spreading ripples. �

Nicholas Hagger's 55 books include innovatory works on literature, history, philosophy and international politics. In his first published literary work he revived the Preface, which had fallen into disuse after Wordsworth and Shelley. He went on to write Prefaces (sometimes called ‘Prologues’, ‘Introductions’ or ‘Introductory Notes’) for all his subsequent books. Collected Prefaces, a collection of 55 Prefaces (excluding the Preface to this book), sets out his thinking and the reader can follow the development of his philosophy of Universalism (of which he is the main exponent), his literary approach (particularly his combination of Romanticism and Classicism which he calls "neo-Baroque") and his metaphysical thinking. His Prefaces can be read as essays, and as in T.S. Eliot’s Selected Essays there is an interaction between adjacent Prefaces that brings an entirely new perspective to Hagger's works. These Prefaces cover an enormous range. Nicholas Hagger is a Renaissance man at home in many disciplines. His Universalism focuses on humankind’s relationship to the whole universe as reflected in seven key disciplines seen as wholes: the whole of literature, history, philosophy and the sciences, mysticism, religion, international politics and statecraft and world culture. Behind all the Prefaces is Hagger’s fundamental perception of the unity of the universe as the One and of humankind’s position in it. These Prefaces complement his Selected Letters, a companion volume also published by O-Books, and contain startling insights that illumine and send readers to the works the Prefaces introduce.

In Fools’ Paradise, a mock-heroic poem on Brexit which complements his masque King Charles the Wise, Nicholas Hagger presents the most important British event since the Second World War: the Brexiteers’ struggle to wrest control of the UK’s laws, borders, money and trade from the EU and turn the UK into a more prosperous paradise. In 16 cantos and an epilogue of heroic couplets with an epic tone he narrates the 2018 Chequers compromise and its aftermath: the EU’s opposition, lack of internal support, looming ‘no deal’ and requests for extensions that keep the UK in the EU. He shows the UK Ship of State as manned by a squabbling crew sailing for an illusory paradise and too riven by division to reach agreement. The dream all were promised seems undeliverable. In the tradition of the social satire of Dryden and Pope, the elevated style is undermined by a recurring image of the Ship of Fools in Sebastian Brant’s 1494 Swiss poem Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff), which makes a chaotic voyage from Europe to an illusory paradise across the waves. It becomes apparent that all on the UK Ship of State are to some extent living in a fools’ paradise. Focusing on the historic decision to leave Europe that if carried through would have immense repercussions for coming generations, Nicholas Hagger presents the warring factions on the UK Ship of State and in true Universalist manner foresees a resolution of the conflict in the reconciliation of a coming united world. This is an astonishing poem that approaches the most important national event of our time in the spirit of Tennyson and gets to the heart of the UK’s national predicament.

In King Charles the Wise, Nicholas Hagger celebrated Prince Charles’s humanitarian vision and foresaw the birth of a united world. In The Coronation of King Charles he celebrates the coming Carolingian Age. The hope is that all the divisions within the UK and problems of humankind will be resolved under a new democratic World State working to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty, and solve the world’s environmental and ecological problems of climate change and global warming; and that King Charles, Head of a Commonwealth of 53 nation-states, will work to bring his humanitarian vision to all the world’s nations. Following the tradition of Ben Jonson’s 17th-century court masques in verse and of his own masques The Dream of Europa and King Charles the Wise, which incorporate the blend of mythology and history and five sections (prologue, antimasque, masque, revels and epilogue) found in all masques. Hagger sets the third masque in his trilogy in London's Banqueting House, where masques were performed before James I. This coronation masque contains three pageant entertainments that are viewed by King Charles before his coronation and contrast the disorder and political chaos before his reign with the order and harmony of his new Carolingian Age. His philosopher-King’s concern to benefit the lot of all humankind is applauded by the Universalist God of the One who assumes protean forms - the gods of all faiths including Biblical Israel’s Yahweh and Olympian Zeus - and cares for all creation, and watches over him. King Charles, co-author of Harmony, is shown as presiding over what promises to be an Age of Universal Harmony.

Between 1979 and 1982 Nicholas Hagger wrote three letters to the eminent literary critic Christopher Ricks about his poetic identity, and Ricks agreed with his final view that his verse blends the Romantic and Classical traditions within the Baroque tradition. In 1979 and again in 1982 Ricks asked him to select 30 poems. Forty years later A Baroque Vision presents a selection that shows his Baroque roots. Part One presents 30 poems written before 1979, and Part Two adds 70 verse selections written between 1979 and 2019. A Baroque Vision presents 100 verse selections drawn from 50 volumes of his poems, verse plays and masques. The Baroque style, which can be found in all European countries, combines the spiritual and the sensual, and features movement, transformation, the Mystic Way, the mysterious Light, the transcending of death, the divine soul and Heaven, as illustrated in Rubens’ The Apotheosis of James I (shown on the front cover); and blends the Romantic and Classical traditions. In his Preface Hagger shows very clearly that his Baroque vision was behind, and grew into, his Universalism, his philosophy and worldview of the unity of the universe whose development can be traced in his Selected Letters and Collected Prefaces, and in the companion volume to this work The Essentials of Universalism (all published by O-Books). These 100 verse selections confirm that his Baroque vision is inspired by the 17th century (by the Metaphysical poets, Milton and Dryden), but also by the 18th and 19th centuries (by Pope, Wordsworth and Tennyson).

In Fools’ Paradise Nicholas Hagger presented the UK’s attempt to leave the EU under Prime Minister Theresa May in terms of the voyage of Sebastian Brant’s 1494 Ship of Fools heading with a mutinous crew for the illusory, nonexistent paradise of Narragonia. His mock-heroic satirical poem on the political chaos surrounding the most important UK decision since the Second World War is in rhymed heroic couplets, in the tradition of Dryden and Pope. In this sequel, Fools’ Gold, Hagger focuses on the beginning of Boris Johnson’s premiership, the promises that won him the 2019 General Election with an 80-seat majority, and his removal of the UK from the EU, only to be engulfed by the deadly Covid pandemic which has devastated the UK economy. Hagger describes the catastrophic national events in heroic blank verse, which befits the darkening mood. The UK public has been promised a new Golden Age, an age of plenty, and it remains to be seen whether there will be prosperity for all - gold - now that the UK is facing colossal debt outside the EU, or whether the promises will turn out to be worthless iron pyrites: fools’ gold.

During a visit to Jordan Nicholas Hagger stood on Mount Nebo where the prophet Moses stood, and looked down on the Promised Land of Canaan that Moses saw shortly before he died. It seemed as if all the kingdoms of the earth were spread out below him, a new Promised Land: a coming World State called for by Dante and Kant, and more recently by Truman, Einstein, Churchill, Eisenhower, Gandhi, Russell, J.F. Kennedy and Gorbachev - and Hagger himself in World State and World Constitution. Combining travelogue and historical reflection, Nicholas Hagger draws on previous visits to the Biblical Middle East and traces the development of his Universalism in his formative years and then in his “wilderness years”, when like Moses he spent 40 years in the wilderness setting out Universalism in 60 books and arriving at its ten commandments. He reflects on a remarkable life and its pattern and reaches some conclusions on the Providential nature of its direction and on the European civilisation. Weaving together his wanderings in Arabia and Egypt, his past travels and his writings, he presents a coming democratic, partly federal World State with sufficient authority to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty and solve the world’s financial, environmental and virological problems, and in a closing vision a coming Promised Land that like Moses he will not live to see. This is a stunning work with a prophetic vision of the future.

In The Syndicate (2004) Nicholas Hagger described how in the 20th century a Syndicate of élitist mega-rich families levelled down the leading Western countries by promoting revolutions, wars and independence movements against their empires, and planned a New World Order and world government that would control the earth’s resources for their own benefit. In The Secret History of the West (2005) he traced the Syndicate’s roots back to secret Freemasonic organisations and revolutions that undermined the West from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. In The Fall of the West (2022), the third book in his trilogy on the West, Hagger updates the story to include the pandemic and describes how Syndicate-driven 21st-century events from the War on Terror to Covid have brought the Western financial system to the brink of collapse and shifted power from the West to the East, and China. In this first impartial attempt to assemble all the evidence to date for the origin of Covid (like fitting together available pieces of a jigsaw to reveal the main picture) Hagger, the first to discover the Cultural Revolution in China in March 1966, finds that the three main features of Covid-19 were man-made by American NIAID-funded medics in 2002 and patented 73 times since 2008, and seem to have been surreptitiously used as a bio-weapon in a Syndicate plan to limit the rise of China and its expanding trade. A dangerous new Biological Age has been born, and the West faces being levelled down and a sudden fall. Hagger sees the post-Covid West’s dream of creating a good New World Order - a vaccine-protected democratic, presidential, part-federal world government and World State with sufficient authority to abolish war and solve the world’s post-Covid problems - as being challenged by the self-interested Syndicate’s levelling-down; and to survive, it first has to go along with the Syndicate’s plan for West and East to draw together into an authoritarian world government involving China, and democratise later. This is a thought-provoking work with a prophetic vision of the future.

In The Fall of the West Nicholas Hagger examined the evidence for the origin of Covid and whether it has been used as a bio-weapon between West and East. He saw the US, worried by China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative in 140 countries, as collaborating with the Western Syndicate’s New World Order based on the Great Reset advocated by Schwab’s World Economic Forum and the UN’s Agenda 2030. He saw an authoritarian New World Order that could accommodate Russia and China as being established before a democratic World State. In The Golden Phoenix (which completes a quartet that includes The Syndicate, The Secret History of the West and The Fall of the West and is also a sequel to Peace for our Time), Hagger carries the story forward from Ukraine’s being a corridor between the Black Sea and Europe for Russian natural gas to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2019 Hagger was invited to Russia to give a lecture in Moscow on a supranational World State to an audience which included men in military uniform, and he received several awards, including the Russian Ecological Foundation’s Golden Phoenix lapel badge. He was asked to write two letters to Putin and was in contact with Putin’s advisers. The phoenix rises from ashes, and Hagger considers whether the West is rising from the ashes of its withdrawal from Afghanistan to advance its technocratic New World Order by supplying arms to Ukraine and blocking Russian gas; or whether a Russian authoritarian New World Order is rising from the ashes of the defunct Soviet Union to dominate southern Ukraine, and eventually some former Soviet territories, in alliance with China’s Belt-and-Road New World Order in 140 countries; or whether the supranational democratic global New World Order he outlined in World State and World Constitution is rising from the ashes of the Second World War like a golden phoenix. The Russian Foreign Minister has said that NATO is in effect in a war with Russia, and that there is a real danger of a Third World War, and Hagger assesses the likely outcome of the current conflict.

All writers and thinkers, and their works, are in a tradition that preceded them. In The Tree of Tradition, Nicholas Hagger sets out a way for all writers and thinkers to be more aware of the traditions and influences that have shaped their works in all subjects and disciplines in all civilisations, using short personal reflections on how influences shaped his own works as an example. Each discipline has metaphysical and secular traditions, and Hagger’s A New Philosophy of Literature set out the fundamental theme of world literature as a perennial conflict between a Romantic individual quest for Reality, the One, and a classical condemnation of social follies and vices. Hagger’s 60 Universalist works are innovatory in seeing the ultimate unity of the universe, of all disciplines and of humankind, and in reconciling Romanticism and Classicism within a unity he calls Baroque. A Universalist writer is influenced by many sub-traditions, and Hagger particularises the traditions and sub-traditions that have inspired or influenced his works in seven disciplines (mysticism, literature, philosophy and the sciences, history, comparative religion, international politics and statecraft, and world culture) and in the seven branches of literature in which he has written his works (poems and poetic epics, verse plays and masques, short stories, diaries, autobiographies, letters and his statement of the fundamental unity of world literature), which he symbolises in a stag’s two seven-branched antlers. This is an inspirational book that throws light on the traditions and influences behind all works in all disciplines and civilisations, and the 109 traditions and 84 influences behind Hagger’s Universalist works.

"The Rise and Fall of Civilizations" is a sequel to "The Light of Civilization", the most monumental study of the history of civilizations for several generations, where Nicholas Hagger describes religion as the basis for civilization rather than one element in its cultural expression. Saints, mystics, gurus, prophets, religious founders - it is these that drive history rather than kings and politicians. Here, he outlines the patterns of the civilizations themselves, providing a unique interpretation of the dynamics of their origin, rise and collapse, and how one civilization leads into the next. Essential reading for students of history, it will interest all seeking to understand historical patterns and where our civilization is headed today.

This is the first book on Iran to combine travelogue with in-depth historical reflection/getting to the heart of the Iranian Islamic mind. This is a reflective look at the cultural heritage and present nuclear crisis in Iran. Iran's cultural and spiritual heritage is now threatened by policies that may trigger international intervention. A source of Western civilization, it may be destroyed by its main beneficiary, Western civilization.This travelogue is a tour of Iran and explores the rich history of this pivotal country: the Achaemenians (Cyrus/Darius/Xerxes), the Sasanians, the Zoroastrian religion of 2,500 years ago; the Islamic period, the Safavids, and the Revolution which dethroned the Shah and made Iran an Islamic Republic. The Islamic idea is caught by observations of the well of the Hidden Imam and of its expression through the architecture, tiles and calligraphy of historical mosques. The Revolution is brought to life by visits to Ayatollah Khomeini's living rooms in Qom and Tehran, and to the Shah's White Palace.And the confrontational policy of contemporary Iran that threatens to engulf Iran's cultural heritage in the same way that Saddam's policy wreaked havoc on Iraq's cultural legacy is caught in a drive past the nuclear site at Natanz, which has many anti-aircraft guns round it.

In "The New Philosophy of Universalism", Nicholas Hagger presents a new philosophy focusing on an up-to-date view of the universe and its bio-friendly, orderly rather than random, structure. At the origin of Western civilization, philosophy reflected the One universe and man's position in it. The last 350 years of increasing materialism and reductionism have fragmented the universe. In the 20th century philosophy preferred to focus on logic and language and has become increasingly irrelevant. Now a new philosophy, Universalism, takes philosophy back to its original aim: focus on the universe - the universe known to contemporary cosmologists, astrophysicists, physicists, biologists and geologists, who identify systems of order as well as randomness.Reflecting the most up-to-date scientific evidence for what the universe is, "Universalism" focuses on cosmological bio-friendliness and the universal principle of order, and reconnects philosophy to the metaphysical tradition rejected by the Vienna Circle.A systematic philosophy of the expanding universe, Nature and man, "Universalism" identifies a Law of Order that counterbalances a Law of Randomness and offers a new philosophy that has global applications.

Forty years after Col. Gaddafi's Libyan Revolution cut Libya off from the outside world, scrubbed out Western lettering and turned the country against the US, Libya has changed its outlook, renounced nuclear weapons and reopened itself to Western cruise ships and tourists. Gaddafi is still in power. Nicholas Hagger, an eyewitness of the events of the 1969 Revolution and plans for a rival coup, predicted at the time that Gaddafi would still be in power 40 years later. He narrates the story of the first year of the Revolution, identifies its aims and considers if they have been achieved. Before the Revolution he wrote a weekly two-page feature in a Libyan English-language newspaper under the byline the Barbary Gipsy. His timeless and poetic views of Libya's sea, sand and Roman ruins in these articles are reprinted in an Appendix. This is a memoir and a portrait of western Libya. The places visited have changed little as a return visit in 2001 established. This book is required reading for all visitors to Libya today.

Armageddon is a contemporary epic poem about the major event of our own time. Written in blank verse, it narrates the defining event for civilisation today: the American President Bush's struggle against the Islamic extremism of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, in the course of which Bush transforms himself, the US and the world. It follows the War on Terror from September 11, 2001 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which some believe were illegally waged for reasons of oil. Covertly supported by Iran, bin Laden is shown as possessing at least 20 nuclear suitcase bombs (a purchase confirmed by Hans Blix of the IAEA in 2004), some of which he plans to explode simultaneously in 10 American cities - hence the title. The poem presents all sides of the War on Terror and makes sense of the first decade of the 21st century. Armageddon is Nicholas Hagger's second poetic epic. It is the successor to his Overlord, which was the first major poetic epic in the English language since Milton's Paradise Lost. Overlord was about the Second World War from D-Day to the dropping of the atomic bomb and also followed an American hero, Eisenhower.Like Overlord, Armageddon is also in the tradition of Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid, and its epic sweep includes higher and lower worlds in the Universalist manner. Both qualify as American epics, though written by an English poet. The only other poet to have written two major poetic epics is Homer.

Nicholas Hagger's Collected Poems contained 30 volumes of his poems that reflect his quest for the One. Life Cycle and Other New Poems contains volumes 31-34 and presents the vision of unity to which his quest has led. 'Life Cycle' is a reflection on the path and pattern in our lives, and on twelve seven-year ages from infancy to advanced old age. 'In Harmony with the Universe' presents poems on the soul's harmony and oneness with Nature. 'An Unsung Laureate' focuses on public events and the conflicts within Western society. 'Adventures in Paradise' recounts journeys to remote places that have echoes of Paradise, including the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica - and reflections on evolution and global warming. Hagger derives his inspiration from the 17th-century Metaphysical poets and seeks to unite the later Augustan and Romantic traditions. These poems reconcile the soul's harmony with the universe and the conflicts in public life, and are within the poetic tradition of Wordsworth and Tennyson.They add significantly to Collected Poems, Classical Odes and Hagger's two poetic epics, Overlord and Armageddon, also published by O-Books (the manuscripts and papers for which are held in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex). They carry forward his Universalist approach to poetry which unveils an ordered universe behind the apparent chaos of world events.

Nicholas Hagger's Collected Stories covered five volumes containing 1,001 very short stories detailing five decades (from the 1960s to the 2000s) in the life of Philip Rawley, whose demise was misleadingly announced at the end of the fifth volume. This sixth volume contains 201 stories and deals with the chill of winter, impending old age. These mini-stores present a wide range of characters, and their follies and flaws. They offer a complete literary experience in a page or two, and their combination of opposites derives its inspiration from the 17th century: Dr Johnson's description in his 'Life of Cowley' of the wit of the Metaphysical poets as "a combination of dissimilar images" in which "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together". They are verbal paintings that present an image in action and reveal a poet's eye for significant detail. Hagger's stories are innovatory in their brevity. They are imagistic, economical and vivid, and cumulatively reflect the Age. They are ideal for short concentration spans: reading on journeys or in bed. Individual stories drop into the consciousness like a stone into a well, leaving the mind to reflect on the ripples.These imaginative stories in clean prose make excellent reading and contain memorable images and studies of character.

Epping Forest was given to the public in 1878. It has many historical and literary associations involving, for example, Harold II, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Clare and Churchill. Nicholas Hagger came to Epping Forest during the war. As a boy he knew Sir William Addison, long recognised as an authority on the Forest, and saw Churchill speak in his village in 1945. He grew up against the background of the Forest and visited it regularly when he was living elsewhere. The Forest has come into many of his poems and other works. In Part One of this book he conveys the history of Epping Forest in the times of the Celts and Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, Medievals and Tudors, and enclosers and loppers. In Part Two he shows how history has shaped the Forest places he grew up with: Loughton, Chigwell, Woodford, Buckhurst Hill, Waltham Abbey, High Beach, Upshire, Epping, the Theydons and Chingford Plain. An Appendix contains some of his poems about these places. His blending of history, recollection and poetic reflection presents a rounded view of the Forest.Using a technique of objective narrative he developed in other works and drawing on personal experience to give the flavour of a personal memoir, he evokes the spirit of the Forest through its best-loved places and wildlife, and brings the Forest alive through his historical perspective, evocation of Nature and vivid writing.

Nicholas Hagger’s literary, philosophical, historical and political writings are innovatory. He has set out a new approach to literature that combines Romantic and Classical outlooks in a substantial literary oeuvre of 2,000 poems including over 300 classical odes, two poetic epics, five verse plays, three masques, two travelogues and 1,200 stories. He has created a new philosophy of Universalism that focuses on the unity of the universe and humankind and the interconnectedness of all disciplines, and challenges modern philosophy. He has presented an original historical view of the rise and fall of civilisations, and proposed - and detailed - a limited democratic World State with the power to abolish war and solve all the world’s problems. Selected Letters draws together those of his letters (written over 60 years) that aid the interpretation and elucidation of his works. Many of his correspondents are well-known figures within literature, philosophy, history and international politics, and Hagger is in the footsteps of Alexander Pope in editing his own letters, which are in the tradition of Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, T.E. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Ted Hughes (one of his correspondents). They throw light on all aspects of Hagger’s vast output, and are required reading for all interested in following the growth of his Universalism, his literary development and his innovatory approach to universal truth. NICHOLAS HAGGER is a poet, man of letters, cultural historian and philosopher. He has lectured at universities in Iraq, Libya and Japan, where he was a Professor of English Literature. He has written 54 books. These include an immense literary offering, most recently King Charles the Wise and Visions of England (both also published by O-Books), and innovatory works within history, philosophy and international politics and statecraft. His archive of papers and manuscripts is held as a Special Collection in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex. In 2016 he was awarded the Gusi Peace Prize for Literature, and in 2019 the BRICS silver medal for ‘Vision for Future’.

In A Baroque Vision Nicholas Hagger chose key passages from his verse that convey the thread of his Baroque vision. In its companion volume The Essentials of Universalism he chooses key passages from his prose works that convey the thread of his Universalism, which grew out of his Baroque perspective. Hagger’s literary, mystical, religious, philosophical, historical, cultural and political Universalist writings are innovatory. In 60 books he has: set out a new approach to literature and identified its fundamental theme as a quest for the One, an infinite Reality perceived as Light, that alternates with condemnation of social follies and vices; presented many mystics’ illuminations; seen the Light as the common essence of all religions; created a new philosophy of Universalism that restates the unity of the universe and challenges modern philosophy; charted the history of the rise and fall of civilisations; reconciled the divisions within world culture; and proposed a democratic World State with limited supranational power to abolish war and bring in a Golden Age of peace and prosperity. The Essentials of Universalism is a stunning anthology of his writings that covers all aspects of his thinking and range. Chosen by the author himself, the excerpts include the most important passages in the Hagger canon and are representative of his vast output. Since the book was completed Hagger has brought out The Algorithm of Creation, the first-ever statement of a Theory of Everything and a further development of his Universalism.This anthology makes clear the main thrust of his life’s work and is required reading for all interested in seeing how his many innovations connect.

In The New Philosophy of Universalism Nicholas Hagger outlined a new philosophy that restates the order within the universe, the oneness of humankind and an infinite Reality perceived as Light; and its applications in many disciplines, including literature. In this work of literary Universalism which carries forward the thinking in T.S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' and other essays, Hagger traces the fundamental theme of world literature, which has alternating metaphysical and secular aspects: a quest for Reality and immortality; and condemnation of social vices in relation to an implied virtue. Since classical times these two antithetical traditions have periodically been synthesised by Universalists. Hagger sets out the world Universalist literary tradition: the writers who from ancient times have based their work on the fundamental Universalist theme. These can be found in the Graeco-Roman world, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in the Baroque Age, in the Neoclassical, Romantic Victorian and Modernist periods, and in the modern time.He demonstrates that the Universalist sensibility is a synthesis of the metaphysical and secular traditions, and a combination of the Romantic inspired imagination (the inner faculty by which Romantic poets approached the Light) and the Neoclassical imitative approach to literature which emphasizes social order and proportion, a combination found in the Baroque time of the Metaphysical poets, and in Victorian and Modernist literature. Universalists express their cross-disciplinary sensibility in literary epic, as did Homer, Virgil, Dante and Milton, and in a number of genres within literature - and in history and philosophy. Universalist historians claim that every civilisation is nourished by a metaphysical vision that is expressed in its art, and when it declines secular, materialist writings lose contact with its central vision. As Universalist literary works restate the order within the universe, reveal metaphysical Being and restore the vision of Reality, Hagger excitingly argues that the Universalist sensibility renews Western civilisation's health.Literary Universalism is a movement that revives the metaphysical outlook and combines it with the secular, materialistic approach to literature that has predominated in recent times. It can carry out a revolution in thought and culture and offer a new direction in contemporary literature. This work conveys Universalism's impact on literature, and should be read by all who have concerns about the sickness and decline of contemporary European/Western culture.

In World State Nicholas Hagger followed Truman, Einstein, Churchill, Eisenhower and others in calling for a democratic, partly-federal World State with sufficient authority to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty, and solve the world’s ?nancial and environmental problems. Its lower house, a World Parliamentary Assembly, would initially be based in the UN General Assembly and eventually replace the UN. In this companion volume he sets out a Constitution for a United Federation of the World (UF). In 14 chapters and 145 Articles he details the UF’s structure and institutions at inter-national and supranational levels, and the rights and freedoms world citizens would be guaranteed. He lists the 26 precedents and 204 existing constitutions he consulted (including the UN Charter and the US and EU constitutional documents) and the sources on which the Articles are based. This comprehensive and authoritative Constitution sets out with great clarity and concision how the whole world can be governed, and can be laid before the UN General Assembly. As a blueprint for a World State that can bring universal peace and prosperity it may come to be regarded as one of the most remarkable feats of statecraft of our time.