Aleister Crowley
The Beast in Britain
Gary Lachman & Michelle Merlin
Herb Lester Associates 2023
Folder & map, £12, ISBN 9781739897178
Aleister Crowley’s extravagantly nomadic life is a gift for map-maker and psychogeographer alike. Continuing in the tradition of Phil Baker’s outstanding City of the Beast, which investigates Crowley’s London haunts and is cited as a reference, Gary Lachman provides an attractively produced and packaged map of Crowley’s Britain. Featuring such beastly watering holes as the Café Royal and the Fitzroy Tavern, the London section reveals the Streatham address where Crowley discovered masturbation and the square in Mayfair where he celebrated his last erection. A separate timeline lists 1941 as the dread year of dysfunction. Surprisingly, this gives Crowley’s death as 2 December 1947 when all other sources record his passing as the first of the month.
Lachman charts the Beast’s lairs from his Leamington Spa birthplace to the cemetery in Brighton where he was cremated. Illuminated by an accompanying commentary, the map features Boleskine House that haunts the shores of Loch Ness, Beachy Head, a favourite climbing spot, and Netherwood, the bohemian Hastings boarding house where Crowley spent his final years, now regrettably replaced by a close of new-build houses.
Other landmarks include Ashdown Forest where Crowley “is said to have performed rituals with Winston Churchill in order to fend off the Nazis”.
