Following threads:-

I was looking for D J Enright on Google and found him in a long list of people who have some connection with A Crowley. It has several other surprising members � including Aldous Huxley. It seems that Huxley�s friend JWN Sullivan met Crowley in 1921 in Paris. Sullivan was a mathematician turned journalist interested in music and modern physics. And much else besides.

Sullivan had a particular thing about Beethoven and believed that his works revealed a unique level of truth � he published at least one book to explain these ideas in more depth which people still read and adopt and academics like to dismiss. Its probably thanks to Sullivan that the Grosse Fuge appears as a major motif in Huxley�s 1928 novel, Point Counterpoint � the one which preceded Brave New World.

One of Huxley�s interpretations of the polyphony is in terms of the variety of points of view � including metaphysical points of view. For Huxley even within science there was a tension between say the liberating metaphysical implications of modern physics and the anti-humanistic implications of the science of biochemistry which was beginning to emerge. Here�s a quote from an interview between JWNS and AH which was published in the Observer in the early 30s:

�If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.�

Sullivan also published a number of books and articles explaining the new physical discoveries � Relativity, Quantum Theory etc � for the general reader and he was foremost amongst those who thought that this stuff undermined the 19C view of scientific materialism � and the pessimistic conclusions dramatically set out eg by Bertrand Russell in his article, A Free Man�s Worship.

I suppose both quantum mechanics and Beethoven�s masterpieces show the power of human intellectual endeavour. The Amazon review puts it like this:

�Sullivan's basic theory is that Beethoven's greatness lies in his extraordinary perceptions, his heightened experiences and "states of consciousness," and his ability to organize and synthesize these into a musical expression of a "view of life." He asserts that Beethoven's initial despairing, then defiant struggle against his suffering--especially his deafness and resulting isolation--gives his middle-period works their heroism, and that his ultimate acceptance of it as necessary to his creativity marks the peak of his "spirituality" and gives his latest works their unparalleled sublimity.�

I used to have a collection of articles which Sullivan published in the 1930s - the Contemporary Mind - describing a series of interviews with famous scientists and I still can�t remember why I talked myself into clearing it out. Well it seems that Sullivan and Huxley travelled to Berlin in 1930 and according to Crowley�s diary there was the idea around that AC could get an interview for him with Albert Einstein � whether this is true or not who knows. There is no direct evidence as far as I can see that Crowley Sullivan and Huxley actually met together apart from one line in the diary.

The speculative idea that floats around this possible meeting is that Crowley was the one who first introduced Huxley to organic hallucinogens � something AC apparently knew a lot about. There is also a reference to an exhibition of Crowley�s art in Berlin the same year which includes a sketch of Huxley � although again the drawing has not been tracked down.

There is a story that the Magikal Diary which mentions JWNS was acquired by the Labour MP Tom Driberg and then sold by him to Jimmy Page. At the very least JWNS seems to have been very open minded. (There is some correspondence from JWNS in a collection mainly connected with James Joyce. Maybe that was another interview ploy.)

Strange how one thing leads to another � I didn�t know until just now that Page J was born in Heston Middlesex � that�s where Jake goes for his holidays and where Derek Ridgers and I met 40 years ago. Oh and another thing � Ted Hughes introduced Sylvia Plath to the Grosse Fuge.

He could hear Beethoven:

Black yew, white cloud,

The horrific complications.

Finger-traps--a tumult of keys.

Empty and silly as plates,

So the blind smile.

I envy the big noises,

The yew hedge of the Grosse Fuge.

First and last word to poetry?

Well not quite, I decided that I would ask my sister (who used to be the Borough Archivist for the area that contains Heston) whether she knew anything about J Page. Answer no � although she said that she was surprised that more wasn�t made locally of it as a great fuss is made about Freddie Mercury�s local connections.

Gilbert had mentioned something about coming from a line of fishermen in one of his E-MS and I said by way of reply that although my ancestors were Highlanders my grandfather had been at Battle of Mons in 1914. My sister said that she had made a NYR to look further into his history. We know that he came to that part of West London to work in a school training lorry drivers for the Western Front � at a neo-classical country house belonging to the Earl of Jersey.

Its much easier to find out things about how this house was used in the Second World War than the First. For example it was mentioned recently in an article about Dad�s Army and the Home Guard:

�At Osterley, Tom Wintringham, who had commanded a battalion of the International Brigade in Spain, taught that 'two or three determined men with a length of tram line or stout iron bar can often [sic] put a tank out of action' (by thrusting it between track and wheel). Wintringham believed that two hundred resolute women with milk bottles could have frustrated the German raiding party of motorcyclists that seized Abbeville. �

I told her what I had found out aboutTom Wintringham. He was born in Grimsby in 1898. He left Balliol College, Oxford to join the Royal Flying Corps and served on the Western Front He became a journalist specializing in military affairs and in 1923 joined the Communist Party. Two years later he was jailed for sedition and inciting soldiers to mutiny.

In 1935 Wintringham published The Coming World War. The following year he went to Spain to cover the Civil War. He led his men at Jarama before being seriously wounded at Quinto in August 1937 and was forced to return to England. He later wrote English Captain (1941), a book about his experiences in the war.

When he returned to England he joined Picture Post. During the Second World War he was employed to train members of the Home Guard. He also wrote several books about military matters and politics including New Ways of War (1940), Freedom is Our Weapon (1941), Politics of Victory (1941) and People's War (1942). Some members of the left disapproved of the electoral truce between the main political parties during the Second World War and on 26th July 1941 members of the 1941 Committee led by Wintringham and J. B. Priestley established the socialist Common Wealth Party. The party advocated the three principles of Common Ownership, Vital Democracy and Morality in Politics

So Dad�s Army might have been the armed wing of a peoples� revolutionary proletarian movement?