The Most Offending Soul Alive by Judith Heimann, Aurum Press, 拢25, ISBN 1854108417
TOM HARRISSON was a household name for a time. In the 1930s he was the energetic founder of Mass Observation, a scheme for recruiting as many people as possible to watch others living their lives and record what they thought about 鈥減roblems鈥�. An early list of targets for observation included 鈥渟houts and gestures of motorists, the aspidistra cult and funerals and undertakers鈥�. The idea attracted thousands of unpaid observers and the reports are uniquely valuable in social science. There is still a colossal unresearched archive of them at Sussex University.
When the Second World War began, Harrisson dropped out, literally, by parachute into Borneo to lead a successful resistance against the Japanese. After the war he returned to live on the island. His ferocious energy led him into, among other things, palaeontology, conservation, running the Sarawak Museum, making films, writing books, and occasional collaboration with the secret operations. It was a life so extraordinary that many did not believe his exploits.
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He was killed in a road accident in Thailand in 1976, a bathetic end to an amazing life. This is an outstanding biography of a difficult, complex subject. In The Most Offending Soul Alive, Judith Heimann, who knew him well, writes with admirable objectivity about Harrisson鈥檚 infuriating contradictions, his charm, audacity, pioneering scientific work and his tangled loves. But her objectivity is clearly mixed with admiration.