Bill Hopkins

Who was Bill Hopkins?

Bill Hopkins was a Welsh novelist and journalist, and has been grouped with the Angry Young Men. His father was Ted Hopkins, a popular stage performer; his mother Violet Brodrick. He is survived by his German-born wife, Carla Hopkins, the proprietress of the antiques store they ran together for many years.

His one published novel is a philosophical thriller, The Divine and The Decay, also published as The Leap! In this story, the fate of Britain hangs in the balance. Political parties are jockeying for power. A recently formed political party is led by a visionary firebrand, Peter Plowart, who has planned the assassination of his arch-rival, the leader of his own political party. As he anticipates the assassination, he realises he must establish an alibi to show that he was somewhere else when it all comes to pass. By examining the statistics tables of a meticulously researched government census, he decides to make a little trip to a little island off the coast of Britain and give a speech to the citizens there. If everything were timed properly, he could rely quite simply on the inhabitants remembering him visiting them, and they would vouch for him being with them when the actual assassination took place. His encounter with the islanders, however, leads him to question and test his "will power".