THE SUNDAY TIMES

London, England

9 February 1930

THE UNIVERSITIES.

A LECTURE INCIDENT.

ALLEGED BANNED LECTURE.

The cancellation of Mr. Aleister Crowley’s lecture to the Poetry Club has naturally caused a certain amount of interest, the more so because of the quite remarkable speed with which it appeared on sale in the streets [The Banned Lecture] in pamphlet form. Actually, it would appear that Oxford did not miss very much by the reason Mr. Crowley’s absence. His name was an exciting one for the Poetry Club to juggle with, and they juggled dextrously.

It is to be regretted, however, that so misleading an impression of what really happened should have been propagated; the lecture though "banned" in a sense by the Roman Catholic persuasion in Oxford—which rightly, of course, has no official standing—was not banned by the University authorities. They, in fact, had evinced no interest whatever in the proceedings, and probably Mr. Crowley would have spoken without hindrance had it not been for the pressure brought to bear on secretary of the club, which resulted in his having to ask Mr. Crowley to cancel his visit.