John "Hoppy" Hopkins, who died aged 77 in 2015, was a photographer, journalist, researcher, political activist and counterculture figure credited by some with having “invented the 60s”.
Hoppy’s journalistic assignments meant he had unparalleled access to some of the biggest rock n’ roll stars and political figures of the times; from John Lennon, Miles Davis and The Rolling Stones to Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Martin Luther King.
Hopkins was a founder of the radical London Free School, a progenitor of the Notting Hill Carnival; a contributor to the pacifist publications Sanity and Peace News; and a driving force behind the underground paper International Times. In addition he co-founded the psychedelic club UFO in Tottenham Court Road, and the 14-Hour “Technicolor Dream” party at Alexandra Palace in 1967, an event described on one website as “the closest London ever got to duplicating the… Acid tests that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters held in California in the mid-60s”.
