The Temple And The Lodge

Oct 27, 2024 6:33 PM

Author:Richard Leigh,Michael Baigent

In this enthralling historical detective story, the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail trace the flight after 1309 of the Knights Templar from Europe to Scotland, where the Templar heritage was to take root, and would be perpetuated by a network of noble families. That heritage, and the Freemasonry that arose from it, became inseparable from the Stuart cause. The Temple and the Lodge charts the birth of Freemasonry through the survival of Templar traditions, through currents of European thought, through the mystery surrounding Rosslyn chapel, and through an elite cadre of aristocrats attached as personal bodyguards to the French king. Pursuing Freemasonry through the 17th and 18th Centuries, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh reveal its contribution to the fostering of tolerance, progressive values, and cohesion in English society, which helped to pre-empt a French-style revolution. Even more dramatically, the influence of Freemasonry emerges as key facto in the formation of the United States of America as an embodiment of the ideal 'Masonic Republic'.

Reviews

'A worthy conclusion to their investigations into secret societies ancient and modern'

—— Sunday Times

'Meticulously researched and annotated and well worth reading'

—— Oxford Times

An entertaining read

—— Literary Review

Vastly entertaining... Reading Cities is like wandering with an erudite companion through a great city in which the past rubs shoulders with the present and surprises lurk around every corner

—— Time

A superb historical account of the places in which most of either live or will live

—— Conde Nast Traveller

Extraordinary, intensely passionate and quite beautiful

—— The Manchester Evening News

A bustling, revealing and downright moving portrayal of thwarted genius

—— Attitude

Neil McKenna's book is the most important one to have been written about Wilde for many years

—— Irish Independent

McKenna’s book offers an entertaining and fascinating (sometimes jaw-dropping) insight into Victorian homosexual practices. He is outstanding

—— The Observer

A sensational new biography

—— Bent Magazine

A brilliant reconstruction of Oscar Wilde's dynamic sex life, brilliantly written and meticulously researched

—— Bent Magazine

Where this biography really excels is in recreating the fevered atmosphere of the late Victorian homosexual underground

—— Mail on Sunday

A fully convincing biography of this most intensely symbolic of Victorian lives

—— Gay Times

McKenna makes many interesting connections between Wilde’s life and his literary works

—— Mail on Sunday

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