Eccentric Circles: Machine Age London

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Some periods, some cities give rise to ideas and circles of thinkers, that are both of the time and outside it. Machine Age London has had a deep legacy on all our lives - on matters as disparate as education, sex, drugs, yoga and rock ‘n’ roll.

  1. 09/09/2025

    Pub Post Mortem

    Stephanie and Fred head to the pub in Fitzrovia to carry out the post mortem on the series. Amongst other pressing matters, they ask how our subjects hold up against their more famous Bloomsbury contemporaries. How much should individuals be forgiven for being products of their time? And, is anyone too important to be cancelled?

    Pub Post Mortem

  2. 02/05/2025

    Escape to the Future

    We wrap things up by returning to conversations with several academics we heard from earlier.  We ask them why it is that our subjects are so much less known than their Bloomsbury Set contemporaries. We focus on the end of the Machine Age and its anticipation of the Space Age to come, and ask how our subjects fared in the run up to World War 2 when there was a choice of mostly totalitarian futures. In particular, we return to the artist and writer Wyndham-Lewis and his short-lived sympathy… for Hitler.

    Escape to the Future

  3. 01/29/2025

    Escape to the Past… or, Magic Bowmen and Scary Fairies

    We peer into the work of writer Arthur Machen, one of the godfathers of what later came to be known as “weird fiction.” Machen was a great influence on HP Lovecraft, and the development of the fantasy and horror genres. Stephen King is a fan.  There is a direct line from Machen's writing to Dungeons and Dragons, grail quests such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Game of Thrones.  Machen bemoaned modernity, the mechanised slaughter of the Great War and especially the dreary Church of England, which had lost all sense of magic. Instead he took refuge in the past, a fantastic and eternal realm of changelings, fairies and monstrous beings.

    Escape to the Past… or, Magic Bowmen and Scary Fairies

  4. 01/21/2025

    Roadman

    Immensely talented and good looking,  Augustus John might today have been as well known as Picasso, but his artworks failed to live up to their promise. All save one: the singular, Bohemian lifestyle that was his true magnum opus.

    Roadman

  5. 01/14/2025

    Roman Road

    We look at two men whose Christian faith was central to their being and work: engraver, painter, printer, and poet, David Jones, and the painter, Stanley Spencer.

    Roman Road

  6. 01/13/2025

    Yoga, Stars and Self.

    Completing our investigation into the ways the occult has impacted the present, we look at yoga’s journey from exotic pastime to billion dollar industry and ask what the modern sense of “self” owes to Aleister Crowley’s dictum: “Every man and woman is a star.”

    Yoga, Stars and Self.

  7. 12/20/2024

    Drugs... and Rock 'n' Roll

    The legal situation around drugs was very different in London at the turn of the 20th century from what it is now. Opium was a go-to painkiller. And cocaine and cannabis products were also very widely available. In 1896, London hosted its first hallucinogenic trip when Havelock Ellis boiled up some peyote buttons in his flat. For Bohemian London, the time was ripe for experimentation. Later on, drug taking became a less socially acceptable pastime. But that didn’t stop Aleister Crowley who relished the notoriety. He took every drug going and wrote about it. In so doing, he set the scene for the drug cultures that followed.

    Drugs... and Rock 'n' Roll

  8. 12/14/2024

    Sex Magic

    Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare are partially responsible for the development of what is known as sex magic.  Crowley was, among other things, an occultist, an important figure in the propagation of yoga in the West, a conjurer of demons, and a heroin addict. His sexuality was licentious, all encompassing. Crowley's law, “Do What Thou Wilt,” has arguably become the dominant way of seeing relationships between consenting adults today. Spare began his career as a child prodigy, an incredibly talented artist who as a teenager was exhibited in the Royal Academy. Yet he claimed to have been sexually initiated by a South London witch, a descendant of the Salem witch trials.

    Sex Magic
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Some periods, some cities give rise to ideas and circles of thinkers, that are both of the time and outside it. Machine Age London has had a deep legacy on all our lives - on matters as disparate as education, sex, drugs, yoga and rock ‘n’ roll.

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