Éppen csak angol nyelvben.

Michael Bloch’s elegantly written biography is the first to appear of the widely admired individual F.M. Alexander. We read, for the first time, about many of the details of F.M.’s life and character and the kind of people who came to him for lessons. The list is long. It includes names like: George Bernard Shaw (the playwrite), Aldous Huxley (writer of classics like Brave New World), Anthony Ludovici (translator of several volumes of the first English edition of Friedrich Nietzsche), Clementine Churchill (Winston’s wife), Waldorf Astor (from the famous Astor family), Sir Stafford Cripps (Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Clement Attlee 1947-1950) and Dame Isobel Cripps, Joseph Rowntree (the Quaker who was a  chocolate manufacturer, – now Nestle Rowntree), William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury), John Dewey (famous philosopher, and educational reformer), Reginald McKenna (Home Secretary from 1911 to 1915), Sir Archibald Murry (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), Irene Tasker (One of the first woman graduates of Cambridge, she was also England’s first Montessori teacher, having trained with Maria Montessori in Italy), Sir Henry Irving (most famous actor of his time)….and many other interesting personalities.

We learn about the genius who patiently gathered his observations of living, breathing, thinking subjects (human beings) and slowly but surely developed his techniques of giving back to mankind the wonderful potential (of which we are so often robbed)  called “Man’s Supreme Inheritance” (The title of the first of his 4 books).

The story of how he came from “nowhere” in Tasmania, discovered ‘The Technique’ in Australia and then went on to London and America where he worked on through the two world wars, is told with tremendous care and attention to detail.

In addition, the book gives us a flavour of those times when the British Empire was fading, like the sun setting in mellow  splendour over a vanishing world.

In these last “glory days of the old world”, Alexander arises as a new kind of hero,- a personality full of determination, innovation and hope,  proclaiming his belief in the power of human intelligence to create a new Empire: the empire of the “quickend and consciously directed mind”.

Alexander Zundel