John Webster

John Webster has worked in independent publishing ever since leaving school in 1973. He began by helping out on an underground paper and community magazine based in Brixton, falling in love with the printing process and helping get copies out to subscribers. John then wrote and recorded song collections including, after becoming interested in the Romantic poets, songs incorporating their lyrics. These led to a collaboration with Benjamin Zephaniah to produce spoken word narratives on Shelley and Byron. He has also contributed to various newspapers and was proud to edit two of speeches and sermons by Desmond Tutu when he was battling against apartheid.

Recently he has published a verse account of an overland trip to India that he made in the 1970s, ‘The Rime of The Asian Highway’, and has now given his Romantics studies a distinctive twist with his new book ‘The Closest Thing in History’, which looks at the foursome of Keats, Byron, Leigh Hunt and Shelley through a Beatles-like lens, and uncovers many revealing parallels.

He lives in Oxford, UK, is married with one son, and travels to India on an annual basis to visit his Indian-born wife’s family in Chennai.