Manifestations

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 4

Manifestations

Powers That Be. By Beverley Nichols. Jonathan Cape. 240 pp.

Beverley Nichols is a person of passionate enthusiasms. He is also a very good reporter. The paradox of this combination is that the second quality is not necessarily a good advertisement for the first. Whether he writes about horticulture or Buchmanism (to take only two of his interests) exuberance flows from his pen in such measure that his readers can be, though not often, either bored or bewildered.

In this study of what he calls among other inexplicable manifestations of phenomena, “Radiosthesia” Mr Nichols explores the doings of a number of people with powers transcending ordinary mundane capacities. Among these gifts he rates water-divining by means of a hazel-twig, and, what is much rarer, the discovery of lodes of metallic ore by means of a map reading technique which defies any natural explanation. Mesmerism telepathy and forms of healing which owe nothing to medical care, also figure in his researches. Beverley Nichols begins the book with an experience of his own, when the healing touch of Dr. Michael Ash (M.R.C.5..L.R.C.P.) cured him of a painful and disabling affliction in his hand and wrist which had defied all orthodox measures of treatment.

In this category of supranatural phenomena the author becomes discursive about the “Delaware” laboratories in Oxford, the presiding genius of which is George de la Warr, whose Black Box (both words rating capitals) contains a kind of Pandora-in-reverse collection of uncanny powers. This is the nub of Mr Nichols’s claims for “radiosthesia,” as its contents, described as follows “Nine variable rheostats calibrated from 1 to 10 connected in

series with a detector unit consisting of a thin sheet of rubber over a metal plate,” can cure a patient linked to it “or a blood spot” thousands of miles away. Mr Nichols confesses many times to being out of his depth in describing the technicalities of this therapeutic instrument, but he does positively relate it to the “X Force” which he contends is the manifestation of a power unknown to humanity and one which could counter atomic attack. With reeling brain this reviewer is content to leave the subject there except to add that Mr de la Warr won a law case brought against him for fraud, in which it was decisively proved that the Box was not what is usually meant by a “box of tricks.” The indefatiable Mr Nichols examines the causes of such widely disparate matters as “green fingers,” and the effects of the moon on mental patients, and is convincing enough in his conclusions to carry the reader part of the way on his explorations. He finally recommends that if we are to overcome the forces of evil which are rampant in the world today we might give a little more support to our Churches in their unremitting labours. He probably has something there.