Book Review: City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley by Phil Baker

Posted on October 5th, 2022

Strange Attractor Press, London, 2022

Review by Mark Dalton

I really liked this book, and I think anyone with an interest in, and some knowledge of the life of Crowley would also find this an interesting and indeed entertaining book. The book is a collection of vignettes, many just a couple pages long, some longer and more complicated, describing places around London and their relationship to the Beast and his activities. Over these many stories (93 in all!), the author tells a larger story about Crowley, his haunts, his friends, and the adventures and shenanigans he got up to in Britain’s capitol city during the many years he lived there. “A biography by sites,” as described on the cover.

A remarkable amount of research went into this book, historical, biographical, and architectural. Places and buildings and businesses are described, both in Crowley’s time and what remains today, sometimes with directions on how to find them if interest remains. (Although this is not a travel book, it would be fun to take on a trip to London!). A good book to dip into for the individual tales, or, as in my case, to just devour cover to cover! Highly recommended!