From today's UK Times children's book reviews by Amanda Craig:

Jane Johnson’s The Secret Country gets it absolutely right.

The editor in charge of the Tolkien estate gives us a few familiar features in her tale of a young boy who discovers his gravely ill mother is the Queen of Eidolon, a magical world swarming with dragons, elves and goblins.

Ben goes into a pet shop to buy Mongolian fighting fish with his pocket money, but is stopped by a determined talking cat which tells him that Eidolon is in danger. one of the chief crooks importing its fauna to our world is none other than Ben’s Awful Uncle Aleister, bent on providing direwolfs, sabre-toothed tigers and camelopards to human hunters frustrated by mere foxes.

Before long Ben and his new friends are dodging the evil Dodman and a host of goblins and enjoying an adventure perfect for readers of 7+. There are children like mine who will read any book with a dragon on the cover, but this one stands out thanks to its charming and humorous mixture of the mundane and the magical.

I recommend the current issue of the UK music and movie magazine, Uncut.

It features numerous photographs of Led Zeppelin, interviews with both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and some wildly ill-informed remarks about Aleister Crowley!

Just found a very impressive article online that's bound to be of interest to many visitors to this site: Unleashing The Beast - Aleister Crowley, Tantra and Sex Magic in Late Victorian England by Hugh Urban of Ohio State University.

... Despite his importance, Crowley has been largely ignored by historians of religions. In most cases he has been dismissed as, at best, a pathetic charlatan, and, at worst, a sadistic pervert and a ridiculous crank. Most scholars of Western esotericism, such as Antoine Faivre, make only passing reference to Crowley, while leading scholars of new age religions, such as Wouter Hanegraaff, give him only briefest mention. Perhaps the primary reason for this neglect of Crowley -- and also for the intense scandal and titillation that surrounded him during his life -- was his practice of sexual magic...

Dr Richard Kaczynski, author of the wonderful biography Perdurabo, includes the following interesting items in his list of "Selected Publications and Presentations":

Crowley, Aleister. (in preparation). Sword of Song: Annotated and edited by Richard Kaczynski.

Hymenaeus Beta, & Kaczynski, R. (in preparation). Crowley on Drugs.

Just occasionally I find myself adding an item to LAShTAL.COM that I know really shouldn't be here!

Oh well, here goes!

From the Daily Record today:

Hotelier exorcises devil-worshipper Crowley's old bed

The room with Crowley's bed always has a very strong musty smell.

Dear, oh dear... I'm not proud of publicising this sort of stuff, you know!

The best of the Thelemic e-lists is without doubt thelema93-l. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Aleister Crowley and his impact. Of course, there's the usual "my OTO is better than your OTO" sort of squabbling that ruins so much online Thelemic material - and which LAShTAL.COM tries so hard to avoid - but among the posters to the e-list are some of the best informed Thelemites and Thelemic commentators.

Among recent threads has been a particularly interesting one on Crowley's masonic status...

In today's UK The Independent (Thursday 25 November), Kevin Jackson writes an obituary for actor Tom Cocklin, actor, comedian and writer.

Writing of their last meeting in early November, Jackson mentions that "over lunch we talked of possible collaborations ahead: my ruminations about a project on Aleister Crowley..."