Tag Archives: London

Aleister Crowley MI5

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Richard C McNeff
(Occult Fiction)

Aleister Crowley MI5 
Richard McNeff
ISBN: 978-1-914153-02-0
£15.00+p&p / US $22.00+p&p

Click HERE for UK edition

Click HERE for USA & Elsewhere

Click HERE for the Kindle edition 

Audiobook (auto-narated)

An unsettling encounter with Aleister Crowley in a Soho pub launches Dylan Thomas on an adventure whose first stop is the opening of the Surrealist Exhibition on June 11, 1936. With the Welsh poet is his first editor Victor Neuburg, the Beast’s lapsed apprentice. In the bohemian fleshpots of Fitzrovia and Soho they connect with such luminaries of the period as Nina Hamnett, Augustus John, Tom Driberg, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, as well as Crowley himself. Neuburg confronts the terrifying magick of his youth and something even more menacing — a Crowley orchestrated MI5 plot to avert the abdication. Aleister Crowley MI5 is an exhilarating work of fiction with highly researched fact at its core.

Richard McNeff on Aleister Crowley MI5 from ‘LASHTAL’

From the reviews:

‘McNeff’s book is so different from anything you usually find on a bookshelf that it should perhaps be a compulsory purchase.’— Independent on Sunday

‘Probably the finest modern novel featuring Aleister Crowley.’— Lashtal

‘Aleister Crowley as himself in all his occult and charismatic glory – a manipulative, overbearing, bizarre yet compelling character. Fiction could hardly have invented him: he is a gift of a character to any novelist & Richard McNeff has accepted him, unwrapped the parcel and given him his head.’ — Martin Booth, author of A Magick Life

‘A swaggering romp of a novel. Plot by Buchan; characters by Beardsley; setting Art Deco — difficult to better that.’ — Wormwood

‘A very clever idea, fleshed out with wit and style and an excellent sense of the times.’ — Silverstar

 ‘Full of fascinating nuggets…..Neuburg’s crisis of identity with AC is very well observed.’ — Snoo Wilson:   

Richard C McNeff’s early acquaintance with John Symonds, Crowley’s literary executor and biographer, sparked an interest that developed into the 1977 cult short story ‘Sybarite among the Shadows’. This grew into Aleister Crowley MI5. He is also the author of With Barry Flanagan: Travels through Time and Spain (the Lilliput Press), a memoir which grew out of his experience of curating shows for the sculptor, the Brexit satire, The Dream of Boris, and has written for the Guardian, Fortean Times, and Boulevard Magenta. He lived and worked in Barcelona, the Basque Country, Ibiza and Baku. His current home is in London where he was born.

John Barber

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TRUE CRIME & MURDER MYSTERIES

True Crime – Crime Fiction: entertaining and absorbing Murder Mysteries – Anthologies – Historical – Literary – Memoirs.


Out of the ordinary stories, the weird and wonderful! And don’t miss his Best of British blog!

John Barber has been writing professionally since 1996 beginning with articles for magazines on social and local history. His first published book in 2002 was a non-fiction work entitled The Camden Town Murder which re-opened an investigation into the famous murder mystery of 1907.

John Barber Website
www.johnbarber.com

Books by Johm Barber
www.johnbarber.com/books.html


Ithell Colquhoun

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pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer and poet
(reprinted)
Eric Ratcliffe

cov9781869928988
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Ithell Colquhoun / UK / £30




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Ithell Colquhoun / USA / US$40




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Ithell Colquhoun
pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer & poet
Eric Ratcliffe
Format: Softcover/312pp/90 illustrations (25 colour).
ISBN: ISBN 978-1869928-98-8
£30/US$40
Subjects: Art/Art History/Surrealism/Occult/Magick/Biography.
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The skills of Ithell Colquhoun in her main practice, that of artist and pioneer in this country of surrealistic art, have been long recognised. Additionally, other interests – alchemy, Earth-magic, active occultism, poetry, druidism, the pre-Christian pagan calendar, the history and membership of the Golden Dawn – and writing of and involvement in these interests by book publication and in a widely scattered field of correspondence, have created a miscellany of truly gargantuan proportion.

Eric Ratcliffe considered it was time to get together some of these pieces, to add something of what is known of Colquhoun’s early life and family history and to take the opportunity of listing a comprehensive calendar of her work and exhibitions. The result is neither strictly biographical nor a treatise on any one subject, but it is a first gathering of the roots, passions and multi-directions of this artist. It is a patchwork containing many launch-pads for exploration of the magical and mythical atmosphere which this artist existed in and created. Here therefore is a contribution towards solving a jigsaw and a wind-catch of the minor cyclones of lthell’s dedicatory interests, also serving as a record of her accomplishments in the art field.

REVIEWS

‘The subtitle of this book is: ‘Pioneer Surrealist, Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet’, this multifaceted description captures the essence of who and what Ithell Colquhoun was about. Her connection to Cornwall is through the book The Living Stones, published in 1957, which was an early contribution to discovering the power of the Cornish landscape, prehistory and tradition and folklore. Even today, it continues to inspire people with its love for the ancient land of Cornwall…Ratcliffe’s biography made me want to go back and re-read The Living Stones, and no better thing could be said of a book such as this.’- Cheryl Straffon, Editor in Meyn Mamvro – Ancient stones and sacred sites in Cornwall – www.meynmamvro.co.uk

‘The author gives an excellent account of Colquhoun’s artistic career, explaining why she has been so overlooked (she stuck to her principles against the authoritarian demands of the British surrealist clique and consequently was expelled). Ratcliffe places proper emphasis upon the artist’s magical activities. She was a member of the OTO, Order of the Pyramid and Sphinx, Order of Holy Wisdom, Ancient Celtic Church and the Druid Order.

Despite having had the good fortune to read many of Colquhoun’s magical papers I learnt a great deal from this very well informed work. There is excellent bibliographical information including listings of unpublished typescripts and also as comprehensive as possible listing of her paintings and drawings.’
Ithell Colquhoun by Eric Ratcliffe, Mandrake of Oxford.
Reviewed by Ben Fernee @ Caduceus Books

‘Ithell Colquhoun was a pioneer surrealist artist, poet, writer, pantheist and occultist. Descended from Devonian ancestry, she was of Anglo-Indian birth and received her education in England at the Cheltenham Ladies College and later at the Slade School of Art in London.

After the war she moved to Cornwall where she spent the rest of her life. While at the Slade she became involved in Theosophical circles and then attempted, without success, to join Moina Mathers’ Alpha and Omega Lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of the Inner Light.

However during the 1950s she belonged to various occult groups including Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian OTO and Nu-Isis Temple, Dr WB Crow’s Order of the Holy Wisdom and Order of the Keltic Cross, Tamara Bourkhoun’s Order of the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as well as the Druid Order, the Cornish and Breton Gorsedd, the Ancient Celtic Church, Co-Freemasonry and the Fellowship of Isis.


This biography is profusely illustrated with many of Colquhoun’s paintings and also includes some of her writings and poetry. It is a fascinating study of a unique multi-talented woman who during her creative life contributed a great deal to both the artistic and occult fields. Recommended.’
Ithell Colquhoun, by Eric Ratcliffe.
Reviewed by Mike Howard in The Cauldron, issue 129, August 2008

Mind-Sprung

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AD Harvey
(Crime Fiction)

978-1-906958-67-1b

Mind-Sprung
AD Harvey
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-906958-67-1
£10/US$16
Subjects: Crime Fiction/Entheogens/Counterculture.

UK Buyer




US & Row




An A-Level drop-out graduates from evicting immigrants during the heyday of the inner-city slum landlords during the 1960s to stripping redundant churches during the early 1970s, before moving to northern Sweden equipped only with the proceeds of selling stolen property and some hashish. He finds new sources of hashish even in Sweden but eventually the money runs out, and he returns to London: only to discover it is even worse than when he left.


Eric Naiman, a Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Berkeley, in a six-page attack on A.D.Harvey’s multitudinous literary crimes in THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT in 2013, described Harvey’s account of drug-taking and other shenanigans in London and the Swedish Arctic as “unreadable”, but perhaps that was because he hadn’t actually read it. Another of A.D.Harvey’s novels, WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW was described by THE GUARDIAN as “weirdly compelling” and by THE INDEPENDENT as “free-flowing and poetic….unforgettable.”