Brian McClinton, humanist and author of The Shakespeare Conspiracies: A 400-Year Web of Myth and Deceit, 2d ed. (Belfast: Shanway Press, 2008), has died.

[Christie Waldman]

Brian McClinton's book is really excellent. He died on June 3, 2022, at age 77. https://www.newsletter.co.uk/education/leading-northern-ireland-humanist-brian-mcclinton-was-a-true-liberal-who-loved-respectful-debate-3730206

https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2022/07/02/leading-light-of-the-humanism-movement-in-northern-ireland/

https://www.ronniethompson.co.uk/2022/06/03/mcclinton-brian/ He had taught economics and history at Friends' School Lisburn. I had not known what he taught, only that he was a teacher.

Rest in peace, Brian McClinton.

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Christie Waldman
Irishfreethinkers.com no longer functional, 10/29/22

[Guest Ryan Murtha]

Thank you for posting this, I am reading his book and it's excellent. 

[Light-of-Truth]

First two lines of June 3, 2022 (Day 184) are these:

http://www.light-of-truth.com/pyramid-GMT.php#Day184

Haue added fethers to the learneds wing,
And giuen grace a double Maiestie.

Thanks, Christina, for the introduction for me on who he was. Sad to know he is already passed.

RIP, Mr. McClinton.

 

[A Phoenix]

                                 BRIAN McCLINTON, THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACIES UNTANGLING A 400-YEAR WEB OF MYTH AND DECEIT.

I have an unshakeable high ideal of a philosopher and a scholar that he or she is a fearless investigator of the TRUTH and Brian McClinton and his book perfectly illustrates this sacred principle. I read this brave and brilliant book many years ago and everytime I thought about its author it immediately brought to mind for me the following emotional passage quoted below in which Brian expanded upon the divine principle of the truth-seeker:   

'If the Shakespeare enterprise was not some narrow religio-political plot but a benign conspiracy to teach in the widest sense, then there is another conspiracy which is more malign. It is collective contempt as a substitute for investigation. Every time the issue of the authorship surfaces in Britain, a 'Shakespeare scholar' steps forward to bury it and debunk the sceptic. "None of the doubters is a literary scholar"; "no academic has ever doubted the overwhelming evidence that the man who wrote the plays was the actor from Startford"; "denial of William's authorship is akin to holocaust denial"; these are all common scornfull dismissals of anything that smacks of heresy. As for us sceptics ourselves, we are systematically labelled as cranks, fanatics, idiots or snobs. That is the level of debate on the subject by scholars who belittle their profession every time they deny the importance of the issue or abuse an opponent. 

This second conspiracy is akin to a religious faith in which the priests-scholars make a tacit assumption that part of their role is to propagate and protect the accepted belief. So, if the first conspiracy was a plan to convey the truth through a myth, the second is a collected effort to maintain the myth in preference to a genuine search for the truth. Although a scholar is supposed by definition to be a truth-seeker, it is highly ironic that on the Shakespeare authorship question so many scholars are guilty of betraying their very function. This is the trahison des clercs de Shakespeare - the treason of the Shakespeare scholars - and this work is both a challenge to them and an attempt to sow the seeds of genuine doubt about the greatest of literary problems.'

Brian McClinton

August 2007

R.I.P Baconian Brother.

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by A Phoenix

[Allisnum2er]

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/education/leading-northern-ireland-humanist-brian-mcclinton-was-a-true-liberal-who-loved-respectful-debate-3730206

"Brian penned countless articles on humanism and authored at least two
books; ‘The Humanist Handbook, Ulster’s third Way – The Humanist
Alternative Beyond Orange and Green’ and also The Shakespeare
Conspiracies, in which he argued that the bard was not the true author of
the works penned in his name."

Christina, I second Rob (Light-of-Truth). I did not know the Work of Mr McClinton. Many thanks for helping to learn about the man and his Work.

Rest In Peace, Mr McClinton

[Christie Waldman]

I wish I had known of his book when I was writing my book on The Merchant of Venice! I only learned of it afterwards. Like Cockburn's, I wish it could be more well-known and easier to obtain (in print) in the U.S. It was very generous of him to make the whole thing available in pdf at the Irish Free Thinkers website. http://irishfreethinkers.com/dynamic_content.php?id=160. Let's not forget him and his book. Thanks, all of you.

[Guest Ryan Murtha]

The academics. Woe to the academics. 

I hope you are more fortunate than we have been with our intelligence services. In the mid 1970s it was revealed in Senate hearings, the Church committee hearings, that several thousand professors and college administrators were on the payroll of the CIA, who, asked repeatedly, declined to provide an exact number of university personnel under their supervision. Nothing was done to remedy the situation so I presume it's the same today. I have long thought the proliferation of Shakespeare candidates is an attempt by the intelligence services to muddy the waters so people throw up their hands in despair and say "we will never know!"

I hope at some point your guys decide to change their minds, it looks pretty bleak in America, I even had to move to Mexico just to get away from it all. 

[A Phoenix]

Hi Ryan,

I very much appreciate the above information on the CIA (which of course could be extended to the NSA and various other arms of US Intelligence) and I have no doubt whatsoever that countless numbers of professors and academics are to the present day still secretly on the payroll of US Intelligence, as of course were, in one capacity or another, the Friedmans. 

Francis and Anthony Bacon were the joint heads of the English Secret Service (in modern terms the equivalent of MI5 and MI6) with FB responsible for establishing the permanent foundations of British Inteligence. In addition to Francis and Anthony Bacon other members of the Elizabethan/Jacobean English Secret Service were members of FB's Rosicrucian Brotherhood and I have little doubt that at its very highest level the Rosicrucian Brotherhood is still the secret sanctum sanctorum of our modern British Intelligence. In other words at its highest level the Rosicrucian Brotherhood and British Intelligence (and in my opinion US Intelligence) are one and the same.  Modern British Intelligence hold secret records and archives that stretch back to Elizabethan times when FB was the head of the English Secret Service and I strongly suspect possess documentation pertaining to FB's secret life (his royal birth, etc) and his authorship of the Shakespeare works.  

I agree with you that British & US Intelligence may well be partly responsible for the profliferation of some of the ridiculous and absurd canditates put forward for the Shakespeare authorship. The possibility has also often occurred to me that the delusional Oxfordian claim may now be being used in a similar vein as some kind of misdirection or method of confusion to deflect attention away from the truth about FB's authorship of the Shakespeare works until his secret Rosicrcucian Brotherhood who jealously guard over his secret life and writings eventually decide to disclose the truth to our sleepy foolish world.

By their own admission we know for certain that some of FB's early editors and biographers (Dr Rawley, Archbishop Tenison, Ambiose, etc) who were members of his Rosicrucian Brotherhood were privy to some of the secrets about FB's life and writings which they categorically state was not to be publicly revealed-at least until much time had passed. The possibility should therefore come as little surprise if more modern authoritative editors and biographers of FB from Spedding onwards were also members of his Rosicrucian Brotherhood and were privy to the truth that he is the author of the Shakespeare works and said one thing in public while secretly knowing better. And conversely, the same might be said about some modern day orthodox Shakespeare scholars who may also be members of FB's Rosicrucian Brotherhood/British and US Intelligence who absurdly maintain in public that the semi-illiterate William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the divine Shakespeare poems and plays whilst secretly knowing that FB is Shakespeare all supported by prestigious university presses, international publishing houses and much of the world's media. 

 

[Light-of-Truth]

MI1 was for code-breaking? And MI1g was for “deception and counter-intelligence” based on this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI1
 

Perhaps it was MI1g that is responsible for the counter-Bacon deception.

[Kate]

On 7/10/2022 at 11:43 AM, A Phoenix said:

                                 BRIAN McCLINTON, THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACIES UNTANGLING A 400-YEAR WEB OF MYTH AND DECEIT.

I have an unshakeable high ideal of a philosopher and a scholar that he or she is a fearless investigator of the TRUTH and Brian McClinton and his book perfectly illustrates this sacred principle. I read this brave and brilliant book many years ago and everytime I thought about its author it immediately brought to mind for me the following emotional passage quoted below in which Brian expanded upon the divine principle of the truth-seeker:   

'If the Shakespeare enterprise was not some narrow religio-political plot but a benign conspiracy to teach in the widest sense, then there is another conspiracy which is more malign. It is collective contempt as a substitute for investigation. Every time the issue of the authorship surfaces in Britain, a 'Shakespeare scholar' steps forward to bury it and debunk the sceptic. "None of the doubters is a literary scholar"; "no academic has ever doubted the overwhelming evidence that the man who wrote the plays was the actor from Startford"; "denial of William's authorship is akin to holocaust denial"; these are all common scornfull dismissals of anything that smacks of heresy. As for us sceptics ourselves, we are systematically labelled as cranks, fanatics, idiots or snobs. That is the level of debate on the subject by scholars who belittle their profession every time they deny the importance of the issue or abuse an opponent. 

This second conspiracy is akin to a religious faith in which the priests-scholars make a tacit assumption that part of their role is to propagate and protect the accepted belief. So, if the first conspiracy was a plan to convey the truth through a myth, the second is a collected effort to maintain the myth in preference to a genuine search for the truth. Although a scholar is supposed by definition to be a truth-seeker, it is highly ironic that on the Shakespeare authorship question so many scholars are guilty of betraying their very function. This is the trahison des clercs de Shakespeare - the treason of the Shakespeare scholars - and this work is both a challenge to them and an attempt to sow the seeds of genuine doubt about the greatest of literary problems.'

Brian McClinton

August 2007

R.I.P Baconian Brother.

 

We need a 👏👏 emoticon on the forum now. What he said was so true. Thanks Christie and AP

[Lawrence Gerald]

Thank You Christie for first turning me onto Brian McClinton's  great book and for sending me a copy of it and for your Book Review.  We will add  http://irishfreethinkers.com/dynamic_content.php?id=160  

the link to his book in the Biblio section as well.
From the book :

".....To the living we owe Respect,

but to the dead we owe only the Truth. "- Voltaire

[Christie Waldman]

Even James Shapiro in Contested Will (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), particularly recommended two resources on the Bacon Shakespeare question: SirBacon.org and Brian McClinton, The Shakespeare Conspiracies: A 400-Year Web of Myth and Deceit. (Edited to add: Lawrence, the first edition (from Aubane: Aubane Historical Society, 2007) is also available online for free. https://aubanehistoricalsociety.org › ahs13.pdf. I don't know if it is exactly the same as the 2d. ed., though.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Christie Waldman
to add link to first edition 2007, free to read online as well.

[Lawrence Gerald]

The Aubane online pdf only goes up to P 38

[Light-of-Truth]

53 minutes ago, Lawrence Gerald said:

The Aubane online pdf only goes up to P 38

It is quite a 38 pages, my first look just scanning. Hope to read all of it some day knowing it is good stuff. 🙂

 

[Christie Waldman]

Yeah--sorry! I just found that out--better to go with the whole book 2d ed. at Irishfreethinkers.com. I think the Aubane is only the first chapter online. Sorry everyone. (Edited 10/29/22, Irishfreethinkers.com content has been taken down. A link opens to a pdf of the old home page.)

Edited October 29, 2022 by Christie Waldman
Irishfreethinkers.com is defunct, as of 10/29/22

[Christie Waldman]

You can order the print book from the publisher, Shanway Press, for 14.99 pounds, plus overseas shipping. Amazon.uk shows the Aubane ed., presumably used, but has no copies available. I don't see it on Amazon U.S. or Bookshop at all. http://shanway.com/shop/?product-page=3.  It's 470 pp., has index, bibliography (436-462, including websites), 17 pp. of illustrations. Like Cockburn's, it should be in more libraries! Of libraries in Worldcat, it is in only 29 worldwide. I'm proud to say one of those is my alma mater, Southern Illinois Univessity (2007 edition).

It was on this day, July 12 (1618), that Francis Bacon was made Baron Verulam.