JOHN NICHOLSON
John Nicholson was the only child of Captain W Ivan Nicholson and Eleanor (Nella) Zollner, daughter of the Danish Consul. In 1946, when John was six, the family moved to Flying Rat Cottage in Great Dunmow, Essex, where they kept poultry, plus a goat and a pig. Though the Nicholsons came from Northumberland, John said that “because of the War I was born a Cockney.” He went to Sherborne School in Dorset, and then entered the world of books: as a teacher, librarian, bookseller, publisher, editor, lecturer, printer and writer.
In the 1960s, John and his gloriously eccentric mother Nella ran a shop selling books and antiques in King Street, Cambridge. Later – with Cecilia Boggis, whom John met in 1969 and married in Las Vegas in 1994 (see her obituary ) – John opened a larger bookshop nearby on Jesus Terrace called ‘The Land of Cokaygne’, a haven for rebels and misfits. He published magazines called , (edited by Henry Bosanquet) and , the latter described as “the national magazine of inquiry into cosmology, hermetic science, and the occult.” Columnists – contributed “Cosmic Invasion”, about Wilhelm Reich’s orgone duels with space aliens).
