Richard Bartholomew (Author of 30 Second Religion (Hardback) /anglais)

Richard Bartholomew rated a book liked it Doctor Mirabilis (After Such Knowledge, #1) by James Blish	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Chapter 7 of David Ketterer's Imprisoned in a Tesseract : The Life and Work of James Blish refers to the "few readers" of Doctor Mirabilis, Blish's imagined depiction of the life and times of the thirteenth-century philosopher and scientist Roger Bac ...more
6 hours, 12 min ago · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book liked it The Greek Myths: Illustrated Edition by Robert Graves	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Robert Graves assembled the Greek myths into 171 units, in each case providing a retelling, a list of the ancient sources he had consulted, and then an idiosyncratic commentary. This "illustrated edition" is actually an abridgement, which dispenses w ...more
Feb 27, 2023 01:58AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it The Bodley Head, 1887-1987 by J.W. Lambert	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
When Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895, the press reported that he was carrying a yellow book under his arm. The volume was a French novel with a yellow cover, but mischievous hacks obviously wanted readers to infer that it was a copy of The Yellow Bo ...more
Jan 22, 2023 03:22AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland 1972-74 by Richard Jenkins	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The 1970s were a particularly weird time: in the USA, Stephen Paul Miller has referred to an “undecade” of paranoia and unease, while in the UK the period’s uncanny and unsettling pop-culture style has inspired a genre of dystopian nostalgia exemplif ...more
Dec 07, 2022 01:28AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it Gilbert Murray OM: 1866-1957 by Duncan Wilson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
At the time of his death in 1957, the Classical scholar Gilbert Murray was a familiar voice on the BBC radio, whether holding forth on a range of subjects in his role of "public intellectual" or introducing performances of his own translations of anc ...more
Oct 16, 2022 07:40AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State by Rizwaan Sabir	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hitcham Yezza occurred nearly 15 years ago, but Sabir's new account of his experience and his analysis of what happened remain highly pertinent. The two men were suspected of involvement in Islamic terrorism ...more
Jul 19, 2022 10:44AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book liked it The Green Stick (Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. I) by Malcolm Muggeridge	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Green Stick (the reference is to Tolstoy) was published in 1972, a year after its author had made a memorable appearance alongside Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford in Trafalgar Square as part of a "Festival of Light" rally against "moral polluti ...more
Jun 26, 2022 12:50AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s by Kier-la Janisse	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This underground press approach to the 1980s Satanic Panic revisits some familiar themes but also delves into some of the lesser-explored aspects of the infamous moral panic. It's also a scrapbook of Satanic-themed ephemera – on almost every page the ...more
May 08, 2022 01:51AM · like · see review
Richard Bartholomew rated a book really liked it Tales from the Colony Room by Darren Coffield	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This oral history of the much-mythologised private drinking club in Soho’s Dean Street edits tape-recorded reminiscences and new interviews from more than a hundred people into a chronicle of the club’s six decades. The dominating personality of the ...more
Mar 20, 2022 01:46AM · like · see review

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Doctor Mirabilis (After Such Knowledge, #1)
by James Blish

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Chapter 7 of David Ketterer's Imprisoned in a Tesseract : The Life and Work of James Blish refers to the "few readers" of Doctor Mirabilis, Blish's imagined depiction of the life and times of the thirteenth-century philosopher and scientist Roger Bac Chapter 7 of David Ketterer's Imprisoned in a Tesseract : The Life and Work of James Blish refers to the "few readers" of Doctor Mirabilis, Blish's imagined depiction of the life and times of the thirteenth-century philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon. Although Blish was an established writer, American publishers passed on this strange departure from science fiction, and the manuscript eventually made its way to London and was taken up by Faber & Faber. Today, any royalties that continue to accrue to Blish's estate from the work come from a cheap Kindle edition, although second-hand paperbacks are easy to come by.

Although the book is difficult – in places opaque and elliptical, and somewhat ponderous – this obscurity is undeserved. The disruptive potential of Aristotle in medieval Christianity (both his actual works and the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets) foreshadows Umberto Eco; the links between politics, religion, change and literary production recall the Luther Blissett collective's Q; and the book's mystical depiction of transformation and breakthrough through connection with an inner self puts one in mind of the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. It ought to have been a cult success at least.

Blish cautions that his book is not a novelised biography: history has left us few details about Bacon's life, and even some of these are contested. This includes Bacon's long imprisonment in old age, which here comprises some of the most vivid parts of the story. Blish fills in gaps with imagination, creating a narrative that takes in King Henry III of England, his sister Eleanor of Pembroke and brother-in-law Simon De Montfort, as well as Albertus Magnus and Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt, among others. A note in a Bacon manuscript that may or may not have been added Bacon himself suggests that Bacon held Peter the Peregrine in high regard; in this telling, however, they are colleagues in a secret group in Paris that meets to perform scientific experiments. Some of Blish's embellishments are traditional: in the sixteenth century the playwright Robert Greene produced Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which links Bacon with the friar-alchemist Thomas Bungay; Blish knows that this is a legend, but he writes in his postscript that "since virtually nothing is known about him except that he existed, I felt free to accept it."

Bacon is known as the first European to have discovered how to make gunpowder; in this story, the formula is revealed to him a dramatic vision, albeit in the form of a strange epigram which he has to ponder and decode. This is not a revelation from God, but rather a message from his inner self, depicted as a head "burning as were of brass in a furnace" – as Ketterner notes, a nod to the legend of the talking brass head that has been attached both to Albertus and to Bacon.

However, despite Blish giving us a window into Bacon's mind and the promptings of his inner voice, character motivation are sometimes difficult to discern. Why is Bacon such an enthusiast for the mystical and millenarian teachings of Joachim of Fiore – so much so that he is willing to be imprisoned than abjure them? On one level, he was simply being true to his mystical vision; but is it also symptomatic of how a scientist in a pre-scientific age will be led up dead ends, like Isaac Newton's Biblical calculations four hundred years later? Ketterer explains that Blish accepted a Spenglerian schema of "epochs", and this would seem to be echoed by Joachim's prediction of an Age of the Holy Spirit beginning in 1260.

One difficulty with the book is the use of deliberately archaic language to depict dialogue in Middle English, in contrast to conversations and thoughts in Latin and French (there are also some uncompromising quotes in Latin, which Blish assures us are explained by the surrounding context). More than this, though, the dense prose in places demands very careful attention to work out what exactly is going on, and the historical context is not always clear (even in the UK, the long reign of Henry III is something of an amnesiac lacuna between Robin Hood and Braveheart). There are also some strange digressions, particularly a subplot about Eleanor and her confessor Adam Marsh. ...more

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The Greek Myths: Illustrated Edition
by Robert Graves

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Robert Graves assembled the Greek myths into 171 units, in each case providing a retelling, a list of the ancient sources he had consulted, and then an idiosyncratic commentary. This "illustrated edition" is actually an abridgement, which dispenses w Robert Graves assembled the Greek myths into 171 units, in each case providing a retelling, a list of the ancient sources he had consulted, and then an idiosyncratic commentary. This "illustrated edition" is actually an abridgement, which dispenses with all the references and commentaries and arranges about half the units – edited down further – into seven chapters divided into unnumbered sections. These chapters deal in turn with the creation ("In the Beginning"); the gods ("The Olympians"); assorted "Heroes, Gods and Men"; "Minos and Theseus"; "Thebes and Mycenae"; "Heracles"; and "The Argonauts and Medea".

The 1996 Folio Books edition of the complete text edited by Kenneth McLeish takes a similar approach in re-arranging the material – chapter headings there on "The Trojan War" and "Odysseus" draw attention to Buchanan-Brown’s boldest excisions here, although he retained Graves's account of the events following Agamemnon’s return from Troy. Perhaps it was felt that Homer's epic narratives were the most disposable, given their extensive treatment elsewhere and their paperback accessibility. Instead, we get origin stories and earlier adventures of some of the characters who feature in Homer, including Agamemnon, Helen, Nestor and Priam. Priam, we learn, became king after Heracles killed the rest of his family in a dispute over "the man-eating mares of King Diomedes" – a typically casual and inexplicable massacre committed by the first superhero. Despite the relentlessly Hellenic focus (not even the Romans get a look-in), there is one crossover with Egyptian mythology, with Io finding rest in Egypt, where she "founded the worship of Isis, as she called Demeter".

The illustrations are all photos of Greek statues, vase art and artefacts, recycled from previous publications rather than specially commissioned. One image is described as "primitively executed", but otherwise there is no artistic commentary or details aside from their subject and present location – those without background knowledge will be left wondering why exactly Artemis of Ephesus has such a distinctive chest. One suspects the photos were chosen based on availability rather than according to some underlying principle, but this perhaps complements Graves’s magpie approach to textual sources.

Graves’s retellings have been praised by some, but I found them rather workmanlike and frequently even plodding, with the narratives weighed down by lineages, travelogues and background asides – in this, the work’s purpose as a reference guide takes precedence over artistic considerations, and annotated maps and family charts would have been more useful than some of the images. Oddly, though, Buchanan-Brown leaves many of these impenetrable and pedantic name-checks in place while tinkering with Graves’s prose to the detriment of its reference value. For example, Graves’s section 63 in the original edition describes how Zeus created a "false Hera" out of a cloud to deceive Ixion; she is described as "afterwards called Nephele", a detail that Buchanan-Brown takes out. She is mentioned by name in relation to the story in another section a few pages later, but we lose an important cross-reference to save the space of three words.

My copy is the 1985 Book Club Associates edition, which compromises on presentation compared to the Cassell/Penguin printing – some images are smaller, and there are several widows and orphans. Regrettably, typos introduced include misspellings (“damned” for “dammed” and “heeled” for “healed”) and punctuation errors (“Herme’s Nature and Deeds"), as well as at least one missing line. This leaves an impression of opportunism, perhaps cashing in on the ongoing popularity of the 1970s I, Claudius television series based on Graves’s novels. ...more

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The Bodley Head, 1887-1987
by J.W. Lambert

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When Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895, the press reported that he was carrying a yellow book under his arm. The volume was a French novel with a yellow cover, but mischievous hacks obviously wanted readers to infer that it was a copy of The Yellow Bo ...more

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Black Magic and Bogeymen by Richard Jenkins

Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland 1972-74
by Richard Jenkins

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The 1970s were a particularly weird time: in the USA, Stephen Paul Miller has referred to an “undecade” of paranoia and unease, while in the UK the period’s uncanny and unsettling pop-culture style has inspired a genre of dystopian nostalgia exemplif The 1970s were a particularly weird time: in the USA, Stephen Paul Miller has referred to an “undecade” of paranoia and unease, while in the UK the period’s uncanny and unsettling pop-culture style has inspired a genre of dystopian nostalgia exemplified online by “Scarfolk” and “Scarred for Life”. The decade’s sensationalising discourses on magic and the occult set the scene for the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, of which the 1973–1974 black magic panic in Northern Ireland can be seen as a precursor.

The sociologist Richard Jenkins experienced the panic first hand as a student in Belfast, and he spent the next forty years collecting information about the incident before finally publishing this academic study in 2014. His academic framework is concerned with “rumours, moral panics, contemporary legends, and fears of supernatural threats”, examined through lenses of sociology, anthropology, folklore studies and media studies, and he draws on an array of local media sources, including ephemeral local newsletters. He also spoke with journalists, and secured an interview with Colin Wallace, who was involved in psychological warfare operations in Northern Ireland as a member of British Army intelligence. At times the attention to detail is at the expense of readability (some details are repetitive, and at times the cross-referencing between chapters is cumbersome), but the result is a definitive and exhaustive case study.

The panic was first triggered by reports dead and bloody sheep seen on Belfast Lough’s Copeland Islands, which was theorised to have been the work of Satanists (more likely, they had fallen over and attacked by birds). A few weeks later, the mutilated body of a 10-year-old boy named Brian McDermott was recovered from the Lagan River in Belfast. Subsequent fears of a Satanic threat to children were particularly strong in the area of Newry, a Protestant “bible belt” where Northern Ireland’s two largest communities lived in uneasy proximity at a time when the abductions, murder, and terrorism of the Troubles was becoming a part of everyday experience.

Jenkins describes how the media drew on self-described “occult experts”, such a “white witch” named Sheila St Clair (whose warnings about animal sacrifices were channelled to the media via the Ulster Cats’ Protection League), and the involvement of “Christian moral entrepreneurs”. These included local and visiting preachers such as Samuel Workman, who ran an evangelistic campaign in Banbridge during which he spoke on “Black Magic and Armageddon” (a crossover with another 1970s obsession, perhaps best typified by the American “end times expert” Hal Lindsey, who doesn’t get a mention).

Writings from outside Northern Ireland were also influential. Specifically, Jenkins mentions a popular account by the ex-witch turned evangelical Doreen Irvine, although he also discusses sensationalising news reports about the occult from mainland tabloids as well as popular books that claimed inside knowledge of the occult and its practitioners. Four items singled out by Jenkins are Rollo Ahmed’s 1936 The Black Art, which got a 1970s reprint with a new introduction by Dennis Wheatley; Eric Maples’ The Domain of Devils; Frank Symth’s Modern Witchcraft, which tied in with the legendary Myth & Magic partwork; and Black Magic Today by June Johns, a journalist who had previously written about the self-publicising “King of the Witches” Alex Sanders. As well as these stories, there were of course also popular novels as well as movies such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, and the Satanic-themed tail end of the original Hammer horror era. Jenkins also discussed folk beliefs in Ireland, and even the playground rumours spread by children: significantly, Hallowe’en was an ”enchanted” season that Jenkins found to be quite different from the Guy Fawkes Night he had known in early childhood in England.

The interviews with Colin Wallace gained the book some extra traction in the media. Even at the time, Jenkins shows, there was a suspicion that a black magic scare was being created by the British Army, with one republican news report drawing parallels with how tales of “brutal Mau-Mau rituals and superstition” had allegedly been fabricated by Brigadier Frank Kitson in Kenya. Accounts of fake evidence of Satanic ceremonies later featured in Paul Foot’s book Who Framed Colin Wallace?, which was concerned with Wallace’s biography more generally. Jenkins notes some flaws in Foot’s account, and he interviewed Wallace himself in 1993 at the latter’s home in Arundel in West Sussex. As quoted: “What we were trying to do during the mid-seventies was to discredit the paramilitary groups. And in terms of the two cultures, both republican and loyalist, we were trying to find things that the community in which they lived would find objectionable”. According to Wallace, Satanism was chosen not because of any inspiration from Kitson, but due to the currency of reports from England. Wallace’s notebooks (a couple of pages are reproduced by Jenkins) drew on works by Montague Summers, Gerald Gardner and MacGregor Mathers for inspiration (“the books always gave me a slight sort of goose-pimples”). Jenkins believes the Army had “a degree of responsibility” for the black magic scare, but that Foot had overemphasised its importance. ...more

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Gilbert Murray OM: 1866-1957
by Duncan Wilson

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At the time of his death in 1957, the Classical scholar Gilbert Murray was a familiar voice on the BBC radio, whether holding forth on a range of subjects in his role of "public intellectual" or introducing performances of his own translations of anc At the time of his death in 1957, the Classical scholar Gilbert Murray was a familiar voice on the BBC radio, whether holding forth on a range of subjects in his role of "public intellectual" or introducing performances of his own translations of ancient Greek plays, in particular the works of Euripides. Some decades later, his name has largely faded from view; his once-popular translations are generally obsolete (although kept in print by the Liverpool University Press), and a reassessment of his contribution to Classical studies and public life published in 2007 includes a 1991 quote that “in spite of his great fame when alive, he might never have written so far as most scholars are concerned”. Insofar as he is remembered, it is perhaps primarily due to his in-laws: his mother-in-law Rosalind Howard (Countess of Carlisle) inspired a character in Shaw's Major Barbara, which also saw Murray and some his work written into the story, while his daughter Rosalind (a novelist and later a religious author) married Arnold J. Toynbee and begat further generations of famous Toynbees. Anyone possessing an old "Home University Library" volume might also recall Murray’s name on the frontispiece as one of the series editors.

Wilson provides a solid chronicle of Murray’s life, drawing heavily on his subject’s private correspondence. Despite the 1991 verdict, Murray’s career at Oxford University was a significant contribution to academic life in Britain, and although his interpretation of Greek religion is inevitably dated (he is included among the “Cambridge Ritualists”, despite not being associated with Cambridge) his works in this area deserve a place in the academic canon of the humanities. Wilson was a former diplomat, and as such he is particularly strong on Murray’s work as a “civic monk”, engaging in writing and committee work on behalf of the League of Nations Union and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.

Murray’s political instincts appear to have been radical but his temperament and beliefs were more paternalistically liberal, with a strain of puritanism (he was a lifelong teetotaller). In keeping with this, his view of religion was agnostic rather than sceptical, and he was twice president of the Society of Psychical Research. A chapter of the book is devoted to “Writings and Psychic Powers” – Murray was friends with Arthur Verrall, and Wilson suggests that Murray was probably encouraged to join the SPR by his wife Margaret Verrall. Murray undertook experiments that some thought indicated he had some telepathic power, but he was wary of how public discussion and interest along these lines might detract from his more serious work. ...more

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The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State
by Rizwaan Sabir

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The wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hitcham Yezza occurred nearly 15 years ago, but Sabir's new account of his experience and his analysis of what happened remain highly pertinent. The two men were suspected of involvement in Islamic terrorism The wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hitcham Yezza occurred nearly 15 years ago, but Sabir's new account of his experience and his analysis of what happened remain highly pertinent. The two men were suspected of involvement in Islamic terrorism because Sabir, a postgraduate student at the University of Nottingham, had downloaded a document popularly known as the "Al Qaeda Training Manual" and forwarded it on to Yezza, an administrator at the university. A university manager who had access to Yezza's computer alerted the head of security, who through informal channels went directly to Special Branch. The West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit and Nottinghamshire Police then launched "Operation Minerva", and as the arrests took place briefings were provided to "the Senior Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism at New Scotland Yard in London, as well as the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) at the Home Office".

Sabir had downloaded the document as a primary source relevant to his postgraduate studies, and he had found it not in the dark recesses of the "Dark Web" but on the website of the US Department of Justice, which hosted a freely available abridged version. The University of Nottingham Library also held a copy. Sabir had forwarded it to Yezza because of Yezza's own interest in geopolitics, which included being editor-in-chief of a magazine Ceasefire. The two men spent several days in police custody, during which Sabir was subjected to seven interviews and warned that he faced 15 years in prison. Sabir began from a position of trusting that the police "wholeheartedly" to eventually "having no trust whatsoever" as "the questions became more irrelevant and the words from my first interview were being recycled, distorted, and read back to me".

Meanwhile, the police were seeking out witnesses, who were falsely told that the men had downloaded "illegal material". One lecturer, Rod Thornton (who later made his own criticisms of the university and the police) was even incorrectly informed that the two men had downloaded a completely different document called the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad, which contained practical information for terrorists. It appears that the investigating officers had very little idea what postgraduate research involved and were scrambling for a post hoc justification for the arrests – eventually, they found a lecturer named Bernard McGuirk who was willing to say that the so-called manual was "not legitimate research material", but this was someone Sabir had never heard of and he was based in a different department. McGuirk's motive for inserting himself into the story remains a mystery.

Sabir and Yezza were eventually released without charge, and thanks to pro bono legal support in due course were able to secure a financial settlement for wrongful arrest in 2011. This was not just a matter compensation: it meant that he "would no longer be a subject of interest for the police and authorities" as he had been up until then, being "routinely stopped, searched, and detained at the roadside and the UK border whilst travelling". Sabir eventually took to "cautioning" police officers using the form of words used by police themselves when making arrests or starting formal interviews.

Sabir eventually managed to get hold of police intelligence files (formally denied him, but then dropped off at his lawyers' office under mysterious circumstances), from which he discovered how police and the Prevent programme "use relationships with members of the Muslim community to collect intelligence". The files also show "how the police use pejorative and sweeping language to misrepresent their targets, which in turn influences the kind of treatment they are subjected to". He also discovered that he was already on MI5's "radar" prior to his arrest, perhaps due to a brief encounter with Moazzam Begg or due to involvement with a pro-Palestinian protest at the university in 2006.

Sabir continued with his studies after his release; his research involved interviewing police officers about Prevent, which generated more discussion about him behind the scenes. In 2015 he also had a strange encounter at SOAS after giving a paper on counterinsurgency and psy-ops with someone who presented themselves as being from the military's "77th Brigade". At a subsequent meeting, this person (given the pseudonym "Major Hussein") apparently attempted to recruit him.

Sabir's experiences had a negative effect on his mental health, and the book includes some brave self-disclosure as he became prey to paranoid delusions about surveillance and secret messages. In the later parts of the book, he also puts what happened to him into wider contexts of counterinsurgency theory, in particular drawing on and critiquing the work of David Kilcullen and challenging "the violence and coercion of the security state" over "entire communities".

This is certainly an important lens through which to make sense of Sabir’s experience, although I don't think it's the full picture when it comes to understanding police motives. It should be remembered that following the 7/7 London bombings police forces were under great pressure to show that they were on top of potential terrorist threats, especially after public confidence was shattered by the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the weeks after the attack. Tabloids were awash with scare stories, perhaps most notoriously the bogus "Terror Target Sugar" front-page Sun splash of early 2009, which falsely claimed that Muslims were plotting online to target Alan Sugar as a prominent British Jew. The fact that Nottingham Police turned to Bernard McGuirk suggests to me that there was an element of moral panic in the initial police response, however this may have fed into broader strategies. The "Al Qaeda Training Manual" here served a function comparable to "occult literature" and paraphernalia during the Satanic Panic, with McGuirk playing the role of supposed "expert". ...more

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The Green Stick (Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. I)
by Malcolm Muggeridge

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The Green Stick (the reference is to Tolstoy) was published in 1972, a year after its author had made a memorable appearance alongside Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford in Trafalgar Square as part of a "Festival of Light" rally against "moral polluti ...more

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Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s
by Kier-la Janisse

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This underground press approach to the 1980s Satanic Panic revisits some familiar themes but also delves into some of the lesser-explored aspects of the infamous moral panic. It's also a scrapbook of Satanic-themed ephemera – on almost every page the This underground press approach to the 1980s Satanic Panic revisits some familiar themes but also delves into some of the lesser-explored aspects of the infamous moral panic. It's also a scrapbook of Satanic-themed ephemera – on almost every page there's an illustration of one kind or another: Christian paperback and pulp horror covers, newspaper clippings, stills from films and television shows, heavy metal promos. All are "reproduced in the spirit of publicity" – the publisher even dares to reproduce a few frames from the fundamentalist tracts of Jack Chick, despite his estate's notoriously aggressive approach to copyright.

The book's authors are zine editors, pop culture critics and enthusiasts, artists and occultists; some of the essays are academic, but others take a more gonzo approach – one author relates how he used to prank call a radio show hosted by the self-promoting "exorcist" Bob Larson, while another once drove the self-declared fake "ex-Satanist" Mike Warnke. The tone is set by Adam Parfrey's Foreword, in which he reminisces about Anton LaVey, and Kier-La Janisse's Introduction, in which she recalls the "aimlessness and morbidity of growing up in the 1980s", adding that "many of the essays in this book recount tales of apathetic and lost teens turning to heavy music, extreme movies and role-playing games as a means of escaping a confusing world." Looking back to the 1960s and 70s, she identifies the panic's seeds with the occult revival of the 1960s and then the occult horror cinema of the 1970s: "By the time the 1980s rolled around, people had already been groomed to believe that there could be occultists living next door".

The 1988 Geraldo "Devil Worship Special" provides a point of reference for several contributors. This carnival spectacle crystalised the panic into a lurid narrative for mainstream America, demanding answers from a line-up of folk devils while not actually listening to what they might have to say: those displayed included the singer Ozzy Osbourne (these days a harmless national treasure), a 21-year-old Zeena LaVey ("even now, talking about it, I feel my chest tightening up") and Michael Aquino ("very annoying to all of us on the panel to be used in that way"). Some Satanic Panic discourses were simply risible –Phil Phillips's evangelical "Turmoil in the Toybox" crusade against 1980s children's toys is described as "camp" – but others were sinister. Innocent people were accused of murder and child sex abuse, and the chapter on the hoax memoir Michelle Remembers reminds us that the author was herself exploited and vulnerable.

The book's focus is mainly on the USA, although there are chapters that focus on Canada, Australia and the UK – the last describes a media hysteria around the transgressive artist Genesis P-Orridge, whose home was raided by police while he was out of the country following a Dispatches documentary hosted by Andrew Boyd ("a U.K. current affairs TV show that has gained a reputation, over the years, for occasionally playing somewhat fast and loose with the truth"). This was in 1992, just as Philip Jenkins's book Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Great Britain (reviewed here) was being published.

One chapter stands out for a different emphasis, complaining that the backlash against Satanic Panic has meant that actual abuse has been overlooked. This includes, the author suggests, details concerning the McMartin Preschool case, and he takes particular aim at the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. He claims that it is "less well-known… that the FMSF was formed under a dark cloud of abuse accusations levelled against its executive directors Pamela and Peter Freyd by their adult child", when this is actually common knowledge. Polemics here are a substitute for engagement with memory phenomena – the term "False Memory Syndrome" is outdated, but there is no doubt that people can be convinced (or convince themselves – see my review here) of things that simply did not happen.

The same author ends by claiming that abuse rings "with direct ties to the highest establishment figures have resurfaced in the public sphere" in the UK, citing Haut de la Garenne, Elm Guest House and Dolphin Square. Here it should be noted that Satanic Panic was published in 2015, at a time of heightened tabloid sensationalism in the UK, typified by false claims made by the likes of Carl Beech and Chris Fay. This was the contemporary reiteration of the broader "moral panic" phenomenon which the Satanic Panic was just a part; but while alternative researchers and writers instinctively defend adherent of misunderstood and vilified subcultures, there's apparently less compassion, and less scepticism, when the targets are old Tories such as Harvey Proctor (memoir reviewed here). ...more

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Tales from the Colony Room
by Darren Coffield

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This oral history of the much-mythologised private drinking club in Soho’s Dean Street edits tape-recorded reminiscences and new interviews from more than a hundred people into a chronicle of the club’s six decades. The dominating personality of the This oral history of the much-mythologised private drinking club in Soho’s Dean Street edits tape-recorded reminiscences and new interviews from more than a hundred people into a chronicle of the club’s six decades. The dominating personality of the story is the artist Francis Bacon, who was there from the start in 1948 and who was called “daughter” by the club’s founder, Muriel Belcher, but he was only the most famous (and financially successful) member; the Colony Room was a home from home for numerous artists, writers and other creative types, many of whom styled themselves as misfits and outsiders despite belonging to an exclusive circle whose influence on British cultural history has been such that even in 2022 their drunken escapades and abusive feuds apparently remain of interest.

The club’s three successive curators/gatekeepers – Belcher was succeeded by her barman Ian Board, who turn handed it over to Michael Wojas – have themselves become the stuff of legend by sheer force of personality and dedication to their unusual vocation; not all those climbed the shabby staircase to the louche Parnassus passed muster, and even those who were welcomed through the doors risked summary ejection if they failed to impress. Members were expected to “survive on their own anecdotes and wit”; anyone who told a joke as a substitute for banter would be kicked out, while self-promotors would be subjected to brutal put downs. Some guests have may baulked at being called “cunt” or “cunty” by Belcher or Board, although this was par for the course.

Names particularly associated with the club alongside Bacon include his rival Lucian Freud ; the famously frequently unwell Jeffrey Bernard (of course); the broadcaster Daniel Farson, who on one occasion sat dishevelled and vomit-flecked below the club’s television while the screen above him showed him speaking authoritatively about Bacon on The South Bank Show; the photographer John Deakin (banned for slandering Belcher); and the bookseller and publisher David Archer, who died in reduced circumstances. Archer published Dylan Thomas, although a claim in the book that he also published Graham Greene’s first novel seems to be a myth, perhaps born of confusion with the Scottish poet W.S. Graham. One early member was Nina Hamnett, who represented a link back to the earlier bohemia of Fitzrovia; towards the end patrons included the Young British Artists Damian Hirst and Sarah Lucas, later associated with a new bohemia in Shoreditch. American visitors included Tennessee Williams and William Burroughs.

The blurb on the back of the book also mentions the chance to “kill time with Doctor Who”, although Tom Baker is discussed only briefly and he is not one of the interviewees. It was nice to read, though, that Baker actually did wear the famous hat and scarf in the club, as imagined in Toast of London. Episodes of Doctor Who were shown in the club when Baker was present, although his attempt to interest Bacon in the show sadly failed.

It's clear that the club was run by and for alcoholics, notwithstanding the view of Neil Perrett, the “Colony's resident doctor”, that an alcoholic is someone who drinks more than his doctor and that he had never met one. Photos of Ian Board, who was once Tyrone Power’s lover, are remarkable for the size of his rhinophyma. It may be tempting to glamorise this excess as somehow existential and authentic, and there is a sense that obnoxiousness and callousness was often a front which hid strong bonds of loyalty and kindness (the club in particular took up the cause of thalidomide victims). However, alcohol-fuelled creativity comes at great risk and dreadful cost. One interviewee, James Birch, speaks of “Sohoitis” – “drinking too much and talking about all the great ‘works’ you plan to create but never actually doing anything to achieve them… the squandering of talent and youth”. ...more