author
C. P. (Charles Paton) Blacker
1895–1975
A psychiatrist, soldier, and controversial public thinker, he wrote on medicine, population, and social policy in the turbulent decades between the world wars and after. His life joined frontline bravery, clinical work, and ideas that still provoke debate.
1 Audiobook
Birth control and the state : A plea and a forecast
by C. P. (Charles Paton) Blacker
About the author
Born in Paris on December 8, 1895, Carlos Paton Blacker—often published as C. P. Blacker—was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He served with the Coldstream Guards in the First World War, was wounded more than once, and later trained in medicine and psychiatry.
Blacker became known both for his medical work and for his long involvement with the Eugenics Society, serving as its secretary for many years. He also wrote books on subjects including birth control, population, and public policy, which helped make him a visible and sometimes divisive figure in British intellectual life.
He died on April 21, 1975. Today he is remembered as a complex and controversial 20th-century figure: a decorated war veteran and psychiatrist whose writing reflects both the ambitions and the troubling assumptions of parts of his era.