
Aleister Crowley MI5
Richard C McNeff
ISBN: 978-1-914153-02-0
£9.99+p&p / US$14.99+p&p
Amazon UK
eBook: £4.98
Published by Mandrake of Oxford. Available via the publisher, bookshops, internet booksellers and Amazon. Second edition revised and retitled. Originally published as Sybarite among the Shadows (2004).
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.
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