The English Heretic Collection

Perhaps worthy of investigation is another collision of synchronicities on the 22nd of November 1963 — the simultaneous deaths of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley and Christian fantasy writer C.S. Lewis. Both died within hours of Kennedy. Into this perichoretic brew, two pop programmes were also launched within a day of the assassination — the Beatles’ second studio album and the first episode of Doctor Who.

The cover of With the Beatles features the musicians, curiously dressed like men in black, shadow agents on the brink of a massive experiment in mindfucking. The first episode of Doctor Who, broadcast on the 23rd, ninety seconds late due to extended news coverage of the events in Dallas, was titled “An Unearthly Child”, its central character a schoolgirl with an anachronistic knowledge system, an alien outlook on England. The child appears to think the country has already adopted the decimal system, it’s as if she has come from the future. Replace the wardrobe to Narnia with a Tardis to a more sci-fi set of coordinates, its moral compass spinning out of control, rendered directionless by the metal fragments now being scooped out of Kennedy’s brain in the autopsy room at Parkland's mortuary.

“They’ve shot his head off ”, exclaimed pink Chanel suited Jackie Kennedy to the secret service agent as she scrambled across the limousine in futile search for the disappearing life force of her husband. Did she wear pink in a prescient act of camouflage to hide the blancmange of his brain, spilled on to her dress like the most indiscreet lapse in etiquette at Camelot’s last banquet?