The Bodyguard

by Adrian Mitchell

Speculative black comedy by poet, novelist & playwright Mitchell, nominated, semi-seriously, as Britain’s “Shadow Poet Laureate” in 2002.

Genres: Science Fiction

153 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Adrian Mitchell, FRSL, was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement. The critic Kenneth Tynan called him the British Mayakovsky.

Reviews

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat disjointed, the narrative takes the form of an interrogation and is based upon the subjects remembering events as they occurred. An interesting twist at the end, but in common with all dystopian novels, a bit bleak.

[Edmund Chattoe-Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not an easy reader to please but I think this would win one of my few nominations for "lost gem". The inner life of an authoritarian/fascist is well drawn and the future UK dystopia is plausible and interesting but the author's poetic sensibilities really take this beyond the "plain tale" I have described and into something much more rich and strange. Interestingly, my teenage son also really enjoyed it which, to be honest, I hadn't expected.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

3.5/5

"“[Lens] Rossman’s narrative is both single-minded and rambling, a tangle of facts and fantasies, distorted sexuality, obscured dates, anti-feminism, glorified brutality and narcissism” (153).

Adrian Mitchell’s sole SF novel The Bodyguard (1970) is a perverse romp through a diseased England viewed through the eyes of an equally diseased narrator. Lens Rossman’s deathbed ramblings of his “adventures” and “training” as a B.G. (bodyguard) in his fight against “The Rot” spread by leftist subverts, is, as the “editor” of the narrative indicates in a hilarious afterword, “a tangle of facts and fantasies” and “glorified brutality” (153). Mitchell presents Rossman’s account as a ghastly artifact of a pre-revolutionary era while simultaneously suggesting [...]"