Book review - Glastonbury Psychogeography by Paul Weston

Like most of Paul Weston’s books, this is a good yarn. I bought my copy in Labyrinth Books across the road from St John’s Church, shortly after it came out. The photo of the Tor seen from Tesco intrigued me, I had a really bad black cloud of gloom experience 1 when staying at the Travelodge near there. I wouldn’t go as far as saying the region of the Wirral Park roundabout is cursed, but it’s not somewhere I want to dwell for any length of time.

Glastonbury Psychogeography by Paul Weston

Paul’s description of the happenings there had an even darker feel - the arson attack ejecting Mickey D’s from the Glastonbury temenos, the 1998 Legionnaire’s disease outbreak from IMCO’s cooling tower afflicting customers at B&Q, all confirmed the feeling that this is a hellmouth that needs Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The diabolical miasma doesn’t extend far,  I am fine in Aldi, and the Old Tannery is one of my favourite restaurants in the area. Maybe the good vibes from Saint Bride's ancient chapel to the west are keeping the hellmouth in check. I don’t even share PW’s dislike of Tesco.

The book opens with a tour of psychogeography following the London artists Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair, he of London Orbital, a detour via William Blake before lighting on John Cowper-Powys' A Glastonbury Romance, where landscape and Grail legend are lead characters in the tale. Weston takes us all over the place including halfway across Britain on this own psychic quest, emphasising the mystical and non-geographical aspect of psychogeography. It's good stuff, and takes you to parts of Glastonbury that aren't on the tourist trail, illuminated by Paul's deep knowledge of the area and its mythology. He doesn't leave out the old favourites, and I do like his recommendation of Tallis's Spem in Alium as a token of the Abbey Perpetual choirs

I wish Paul wouldn’t recycle quite so much material from other books, It’s unnerving when you get halfway through a book for the first time, and have a strong sense of deja vu. You probably only need to get half his books to get all the material, the challenge is knowing which half.

  1. This happened a long time ago in the late aughts, probably before Paul Weston started writing his book which was published in 2016.  ↩︎

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