Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.

Thompson severed his ties with the Observer after his editor refused to print his review of Tom Wolfe's 1965 essay collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and he moved to San Francisco immersing himself in the drug and hippie culture that was taking root in the area. invasion of Grenada but would not discuss these experiences until the publication of Kingdom of Fear 20 years later. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism.

He subsequently joined the United States Air Force before moving into journalism. Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18 1937 – February 20 2005) was an American author and journalist. The work he remains best known for is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1972) a rumination on the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement.