THE YORKSHIRE EVENING POST

Leeds, Yorkshire, England

4 February 1930

(page 9)

OXFORD'S BANNED LECTURE.

Reported Intervention by

Roman Catholic Chaplain.

With reference to the banning of a lecture on black magic by Mr. Aleister Crowley to the Oxford University Poetry Society, the Vice-Chancellor is said to annoyed at the impression conveyed that the ban was, in any sense, an official one. It is stated that neither the lecture nor the ban had anything to with the University authorities.

It is stated that father Ronald Knox, the Roman Catholic Chaplain at the University, hearing that Mr. Crowley was an expert in that kind of knowledge which had been banned by the Roman Catholic Church since the Middle Ages, wrote to the secretary of the Poetry Club, Mr. Hugh Speaight, of Lincoln College. As a result, Mr. Speaight wrote to Mr. Crowley asking him to cancel the lecture.

The action of father Knox had no official connection with the University.