My Own Obituary

Simon Sheppard, whose mysterious death took place within the pages of H&D, was a controversial figure in Britain’s political microcosm. Indeed Mark Cotterill, editor of that magazine, proclaimed him to be the only person in Britain to challenge the establishment head-on, particularly regarding the Holocaust narrative.

Sheppard was born in Yorkshire during a period of post-war optimism but his fate as a ‘ruined son’ was sealed by the departure of his father at age three. With a mentally unstable mother he was described during an early police encounter as a “crazy mixed-up kid,” walking out of and being expelled from various schools. After finishing his education and gaining electronics qualifications at college, he relocated to London to work in the music business. Moving through several recording studios, including a spell in Paris (meeting Andy Warhol at a society event attended by Princess Grace of Monaco shortly before her death), he eventually left a job as a recording engineer to study mathematics at the University of Sussex. His entertaining ‘Music Biz Memoirs’ are still online on the heretical.com website.

After his degree, Sheppard started a computer organisation and shortly thereafter began designing circuits and writing software assisted by Dutch fellow squatters in the centre of Amsterdam. When that business died, a skunk works was formed and this led to the publication in 1994 of two medical papers. These together have earned him over two hundred academic citations.

Sheppard’s path to controversy began with his next course of investigation, a ‘back to basics’ approach to human sexuality, the Dutch environment being especially propitious in this regard. The seeds of this focus had been laid during lectures at Sussex on Sex Differences and a late lecture by one of the foremost biologists of our time, John Maynard Smith. Darwin was also a strong influence, particularly his emphasis on the evolutionary role of sexual selection. Sheppard’s series of experiments on the streets of Amsterdam is documented in his magnum opus, The Tyranny of Ambiguity.

Terms are used such as ‘brainwashing’ and ‘emotional manipulation’ but the proper description, Sheppard believed, is ‘conditioning.’ It was the discovery of the psychological mechanisms which can distort our perception of history and turn normality on its head which truly set him at odds with the mainstream.

Returning to Britain in early 1996, there followed several encounters with the State, at one point sharing a cell with a half-Egyptian who admitted to having spent years robbing rural telephone boxes with the aid of a car jack. He had never been caught and was serving two weeks for driving while disqualified, while Sheppard was just starting a nine-month sentence for distributing a leaflet. He also spent five weeks in prison for a H&D article local librarians had taken exception to before being granted immediate release following an appeal to the Parole Board.

His first psychology paper was published in 2014 but Sheppard regarded his novel approach, Procedural Analysis, as his life-work. Indeed he had been told several times that he would be famous after his death. He said that it was frustration at the lack of notice of his work that inspired his more provocative leaflets and publications. This ultimately led to calamity, as a mistake during an experiment capable of bypassing the controlled media and becoming world-famous allowed a feminist police detective and a Jewish judge to neutralise him in many people’s eyes.

Time will tell what Sheppard’s legacy will be. At the time of his reported demise he was occupied with submitting his third medical paper and two new psychology papers which, as an independent researcher amid stifling academic conformity, was practically a full-time job. Perhaps the most telling of the tributes he has received came from North Yorkshire Police, who said “We spent many hours following Sheppard around the countryside while he fed mints to horses. It was time well spent in our book.”