Weekend Deviations – The Devil’s Paintbrush

I’m a Jake Arnott fan – his excellent near history look at the 1960s underworld of London – The Long Firm – is one of the best and most atmospheric books about that period ever written. I figured he was in that groove what with the also great He Kills Coppers and other stuff. But for his latest outing, The Devil’s Paintbrush (the nickname of the amazingly effective Maxim gun) we get a near history tour of the Edwardian underworld of Paris in the company of two of the legends of the early part of the new century – the occultist Aleister Crowley and the wonderfully rendered hero and then embarassement of Empire Sir Hector MacDonald – Fighting Mac and a literary recreation of their actual meeting briefly in Paris when Crowley was at his most occult and Fighting Mac spiralling downwards in disgrace.

Those that know their Empire history know that Fighting Mac had it all – hero of numerous camapigns including during the Boer War and Sudan. Crowley basically built his own cult based on the occult, magic and sex. Crowley was an embarassement from the start for his excesses while Fighting Mac became the pin up of the Empire builders only to slump into infamy after being involved compromisingly with some rather young local boys while in Ceylon. Fighting Mac shot himself rather than stand court martial.

I was a little nervous at Arnott changing periods but by the second half of the book he warms up and gives us just as good a slice of the dodgy and weird of the Edwardian period as he’s done in the past of the Swinging Sixties.