THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SECRET SOCIETIES. J. M. Roberts, Watkins, London, 2008. Paperback, xiv and 478 pages, £12.99. ISBN: 978-1-905857-44-9

Originally printed in 1972, this is probably the best work ever to be published on the subject of European Freemasonry in the eighteenth century in the English language. And as the book jacket pertinently notes, as ‘We are living at a time when conspiracy theories are rife and the notion of secret plans for world domination under the guise of religious cults or secret societies is perhaps considered more seriously than ever’, it’s re-publication is certainly timely.
     The author of this seminal tome, John Morris Roberts (1928-2003), was one of the foremost British historians of the twentieth century. Roberts was a Fellow and Tutor at Merton College, Oxford (1953–1979), Editor of the English Historical Review (1967-1977), Vice-Chancellor of Southampton University (1979-1984), Warden of Merton College, Oxford (1984-1994), Governor of the B.B.C. (1988-1993) and a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery (1984-1998), and he authored several notable works including, an acclaimed History of the World (1976) and The Triumph of the West (1985), which was also released as a television series of the same name. And in 1996, for his services to education and history, he was awarded a CBE.
     However, this book is almost certainly Roberts most original study, and he produced it just three years after an initial forage into the murky world of eighteenth-century secret societies in a paper published in the English Historical Review entitled, ‘Freemasonry: the possibilities of a neglected topic’. In this landmark essay, Roberts highlighted how historians had largely ignored the historical phenomenon of Freemasonry and other secretive associations, a neglect he found perplexing given that the Freemasonry had originated in the British Isles, and it had also been condemned, in its turn, by the Papacy and the Communist and Fascist regimes of the twentieth century. For this reason alone, he argued, the subject was worthy of serious investigation.
     It is therefore a joy to see this classic work republished, and although it has been somewhat superseded by specialist researches of the last thirty years or more, it is, for all that, a must for every serious student of this subject.

Michael Baigent