Claude Houghton was an English novelist, playwright, and poet whose work, whilst being praised by his contemporary authors - J.B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, Graham Greene, and, most notably, Henry Miller, never ignited sufficient momentum with the public to survive the passage of time (though the excellent Valancourt Books https://www.valancourtbooks.com/ have brought five of his works back into print). Reading his novel 'All Change, Humanity!', published in 1942, I began to see why. In the earlier novels, the ones republished by Valancourt, his deepest interests are there but offered obliquely. You see his philosophical playfulness, his interest in questions of identity and of the unity and, more often, fragmentation of the self, the ways in which our perception of any person is molded by our needs so differently and culminating at hinting at a prospective transformation of a person that yields a whole new perspective, a renewing Eden. In this, later novel, writt...