If you did not read this in the 1970s, you weren’t there.”In early 1967, Neville founded the London Oz with the brilliant artist Martin Sharp as graphic designer. Many soon to be significant writers including Robert Hughes, Clive James, Germaine Greer, David Widgery, Alexander Cockburn and Lillian Roxon, amongst others, contributed. Felix Dennis
London Oz became increasingly influenced by hippie culture, and oscillated wildly between psychedelia, revolutionary political theory, idealistic dreams of a counter-culture, with much discussion of drug-taking thrown in. Oz campaigned to legalise marijuana through various events such as the Legalise Pot Rally in Hyde Park, London, in 1968. Oz, however, was clearly against hard drugs. There was also much discussion and theoretical rumination regarding feminism and the “sexual revolution” and by contemporary standards it often seems glaringly sexist.
While Neville had a reputation for being wild and stoned, he revealed in his autobiography Hippie Hippie Shake that he was more of a workaholic, obsessed with the magazine deadlines and his editorials, which often tried to make sense of all the competing philosophies that were exploding from the “youthquake”. Neville was known as a charismatic and charming figure who had a wide circle of friends among London’s intellectual and publishing elite, rock stars, socialist revolutionaries and criminals.