The Library

[font=Courier New] [/font]For all you Crowley fans out there, the current - January 2008 - issue of Fortean Times (the journal of strange phenomena, for those who don't know it) is an Aleister Crowley 'special'. There are no fewer than eleven* articles about various aspects of Crowley's life, by sev...

[Alan: I rather think that DW was taking a leaf out of the book of another great British adventure-writer, Dornford Yates, who had a propensity for having his characters marry in fairytale endings, only for us to read in the next book that the former romantic interest had died in a "convenient&...

The middle two weekends of May (avoiding the Bank Holidays at either end of the month) would be best for me and my partner.

So my vote goes to Saturday 10 or Saturday 17 May.

Charles, are you aware that you've suggested the Easter weekend? I wouldn't want holidays to have an adverse affect on the attendance.

Drat! If only I'd mentioned it sooner. Hope you found it more fragrant than I did. When I first went, in October '91, it stank to high heaven. Though to be fair, when I went in the Summer of '02 it seemed OK odour-wise - it just rained so much it flooded St. Mark's Square. My favourite part of Links...

I think I tend to form my own mental images of the characters - looking at the covers, there's not a lot there to help us. I try to remember DW's descriptions of various characters, but the more detail he gives, the less I seem to remember, so the more my idea differs from what was intended! The cov...

I trust you're pulling my leg....

Just an idle thought, for any of you out there who might be contemplating a trip to Venice in the near future. Why not take (in addition to The Rape of Venice, of course) a copy of J. G. Links' book 'Venice For Pleasure'? It's a handy-sized volume and makes interesting background reading, and you ca...

To return to Alan's original post: I'd forgotten all that dark stuff in Three Inquisitive People. I just remember a not-too-thrilling crime novel (though the 'solution', which some critics said was obvious from the very beginning, eluded me until the end). However - thrilling or not - because it was...

I think that is explained somewhere in DW's writings - if not in The Deception Planners itself, then perhaps in Stranger Than Fiction. As I recall, he wrote the WW2 memoirs shortly after the event, but realised that they couldn't be published at that time. By the time Wheatley had died (as had most ...

On a point of detail, I think it was the third and fifth volumes which were combined as Drink And Ink; The Deception Planners would have come fourth in the series. As to cutting, I don't think any was necessary, as Wheatley hadn't completed the manuscripts. The editor Anthony Lejeune told me that th...

I think I mentioned this to Bob Rothwell a couple of years ago.... did anyone notice quite early in the film version, during the scene in the ship's bar, one of the characters was reading a (paperback, I think ) copy of a Dennis Wheatley? Can't remember if I could read the title, but presumably it w...

Don't know of a plot similar to The Devil Rides Out, though there surely must be, as it's quite a basic idea - a group of friends save one of their number from something in which he should never have become involved. This could cover anything from dangerous sports or drug addiction to criminal activ...

Yes, I'm sure you're right about that. And remembering DW's love of publicity, I'm sure that would over-ride his distrust of Hammer if he knew of the change of personnel.

I proposed such an outing to dear old Bob some years ago, but his location and circumstances didn't make travelling into London an easy thing to arrange, and at the time I had no other contacts who would have been interested. Whichever is the more viable financially, viewing it at the BFI or showing...