I approach this piece with trepidation. Not only is this my first book review, the book is on a subject that it might be considered suspicious to know anything about, never mind to be interested in: the writer and orator Jonathan Bowden.
Edward Dutton begins his new biography by explaining that he was asked to write this book by a number of his friends, amongst whom there seemed to be an increasing awareness of Bowden. He suggests that the Bowden-curious are in fact more prevalent than one would expect of such a fringe nationalist figure. In fact, I suspect they are more widespread than Dutton suggests. I have centrist friends, for instance, who have written for the New Statesman who own collections of his essays. Whatever the size of the cohort, it makes the book well-timed, and well-aimed; as a pre-internet fringe figure, Bowden is an inherently mysterious figure about whom little is known beyond his own output. Dutton’s book is an attempt to lift this shroud of secrecy and answer to the question of who Jonathan Bowden was — focussing, as the subtitle suggests, “his life and mind”.
Bowden seems as mysterious to those that knew him as anyone else
Join Britain’s most civilised publication.
![]()
Subscribe NowChallenge the consensus. Access rigorous analysis.
The problem with this approach is that Bowden seems as mysterious to those that knew him as anyone else. As Dutton gradually unravels his life, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn his real name was Dick Whitman — he seems to have been not only deeply private but a complete fantasist, who regularly told different stories about himself to different people. Much of this book’s effort is spent on disentangling this Gordian knot and on occasion, the problem is so interminably knotted that you are begging Dutton to simply cut through it. His sources also seem limited by those who were, given Bowden’s politics, willing to talk to him; the book therefore relies very heavily on the evidence of just a few friends from his later life, who were often told contradictory information. This can lead to sections that are about as conclusive as the First Samnite War.
In addressing Bowden’s mind, Dutton focuses heavily on his psychological state more than his intellectual orientation. An entire chapter is dedicated to a rather academic study of psychopathy, genius, autism, schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, which Dutton suggests may have been a large contributory factor to the striking charisma and oratorical power which still draw people to him. The analysis is rigorous in form but, given the considerable gaps in available information, ultimately feels speculative. What is clear, however, is that Bowden’s mental health deteriorated over time, culminating in a breakdown and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
But by exploring the “mind” theme with such an emphasis on Bowden’s psychological state, Dutton doesn’t sufficiently engage with Bowden as an intellectual figure, philosophically or politically. The reason so many of Dutton’s friends have been drawn to learn more about this man of broken fragments, I think, is that he seems more precursor than shaman (although Bowden, as a pagan, would have appreciated being called as such). Bowden was also a Nietzschean, in more ways than one. As Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics, emphasis on perspectivism, rejection of Enlightenment rationality and advocacy of the will to power served to open the door to postmodernism, Bowden’s synthesis of Nietzschean ethical and ethno-national political critiques of the conditions of post-war liberal modernity can be seen as setting the stage for today’s radical right.
As Dutton writes, the pull Bowden exerted on those who heard him speak was his ability:
… to entrance members of his own ethnic family and to compel them to want to keep that family – going in the face of members of it that would destroy it for their own selfish ends – and make that family great; make it fight, forever, to be one of the gods.
It’s hard not to read this and hear its cultural resonance when it comes to figures like Bronze Age Pervert, who is also a self-described pagan influenced by Nietzsche. Similarly, the white nationalist and early alt-righter Richard Spencer, with whom Bowden worked, describes himself as having been “red-pilled by Nietzsche”.
For those railing against the relentless horizontalism of progressive egalitarianism, Nietzsche is a potent figure — not because he offers a fully formed political programme, but because his diagnosis of modernity anticipates its most pathological features and provides both a vocabulary and a framework to understand it. The idea that the moral architecture of the modern West is animated not by truth or virtue, but by ressentiment — the disguised vengeance of the weak against the strong dressed up as compassion, equality, or tolerance — is an increasingly common theme for rebellion against liberalism, and one that Bowden was an eloquent herald to.
Neither hagiography nor hit piece, Dutton’s book does not do enough to contextualise Bowden’s work and life within broader political and philosophical movements. There is a lot of interesting material, yes, but if Bowden’s life was a train wreck, that is the body that needed to be pulled out. Yet given the charismatic pull that drew many to call for Dutton to write this book, one wonders whether that task is better left — still — to Bowden himself.
