Outside Masterpiece 2018 yesterday I met Henry M Percy-Pole whose exceptional life story and achievements I will relate to you (in his own words) today. Of course younger sons carry a bit of a chip and like to feel that they are nearly as good as their brothers but Henry’s treatment as an eldest son at the hands of the Percys seems especially harsh.
Before we begin, Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland, Henry’s father was born in 1914 and presumably Henry was born out of wedlock before the Duke’s marriage in 1946. The Duke had seven other children in wedlock.
”Not fake history. My father was Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland, but for political reasons brought me up with a different identity outside my family circle, as Thursby Giles Lang, with the idea that I should never know my real background. Given the influences involved, as well as the use of hypnosis from the start of my life, this would have been enduringly successful; but the arrangement was inevitable adapted by my being born with an exceptional, and, more to the point, exceptionally valuable, intellectual ability.
It was my conceptual and mathematical idea that produced the first electronic computer, Colossus, in 1942, and by that time I had already written music that was earning appreciably more money than the most successful composers of the day, and in the wartime environment in which this exception arose it was easy to conceal my authorship by collateral attribution – with the exception of the digital process copyright which has never been recognised let alone given an attribution.
I continued my musical output with increasing success. So that my assets from this copyright income were huge, through reinvestment in the country in which they arose, some time before the computer began to be a household name and that particular copyright became a serious issue.
The changes in my environment which this earning power, vis a vis my given circumstances, made necessary, forced me to endeavour to discover the cause of the severe depreciation which I have experienced, and in that respect I have been fortunate to be successful as to the information (subsequent to which I accordingly changed my name): but not as to the solution.
On the other hand, we now have Brexit. The governance has assiduously worked over many years to bring about British displacement from the associated complications arising from the ECJ, and has been successful. Has won, and has since gone to considerable lengths to deny by implication any singularity responsible for this transformation. The nature of the British polity, and particularly as it relates to me, makes it possible to reliably exclude any information deemed subversive. In effect there is a separation of political activity from the underlying legal position, so I am considering this should also apply to my own circumstances.
I should be retired and enjoying a share of the considerable benefits I have brought to this country, but the government, or the people responsible for my present situation who are firstly my family, wish to continue to keep me in a position of subservience – on the minimum income in a council flat, surrounded by invisible people 24/7: while elsewhere one or more doppelgängers create an alternative impression. Obviously this is inherently unlawful, but I have presently no means of countering the imposition and thereby improving my circumstances; although I still write more saleable music than anyone else, and can produce paintings that the most discriminating market influences are keen to buy.
It occurs to me that, re Brexit and the digital process copyright, I should endeavour to publicise my achievements as a person who has executed major works that hang in the National Gallery, and have been regularly sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, written or revised most of the music played at the annual Proms concerts and in the world’s opera houses, as well as that of the Beatles, Queen, ABBA etc.; all of which is fuelling colossal pay and bonuses for the favoured few, while I am given only the minimum income to live on. I wont be returning you an Amazon voucher, but helpful suggestions would be gratefully received.
Henry M Percy-Pole 2 July 2018.”
While lamenting the multiple injustices perpetrated on Henry P-P over seventy-five years I should add that he may have muddied the waters of his claim to Percy kinship in 1995 when this appeared in The London Gazette:
Notice is hereby given that by a Deed Poll dated 11th July 1991 and enrolled in the Supreme Court of England and Wales on 29th September 1995,FRANCIS JOHN EGERTON, of 12Nash House, Lupus Street, London SW1V 3HQ, single, a British citizen, abandoned the names of Thursby Giles Lang and assumed the names of Francis John Egerton.
Francis John Egerton, 12 Nash House, Lupus Street, London SW1V 3HQ, (formerly Thursby Giles Lang) 29th September 1995.
No doubt inadvertently, he gave himself a claim to be related to the Dukes of Sutherland and has apparently failed to change his name to Percy-Pole.
Henry’s ancestor The first Duke of Northumberland was also born the wrong side of the blanket (as the illegitimate son of Charles II).
As an eminent artist himself, Henry will appreciate the words of Francisco Goya: ‘fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters’. Rather than devoting his time and ingenuity to inventions, painting and composition he should consider writing his memoirs, which would be sure to lift the lid on such a bizarre, implausible, unthinkable and gloriously eccentric life.
He sounds splendidly crackers…just the chap to welcome the Trump entourage and talk tradecraft with unserer Donald.