Conspiracy theories involving secret societies were prevalent in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Dr Roberts describes them as the collective nightmare of a particular culture – a nightmare that taps into very deep and powerful fears in people. His intelligent scholarship throws a penetrating light on a murky area of shifting and proliferating alliances between evanescent and shadowy organizations, as he plots the legendary careers of many of the conspirators who became the demon kings of revolutionary Europe. Chapters include: Disraeli’s Spectre; Historians and Secret Societies; The First Freemasons; The Original Elements of Anti-Masonry; The Golden Age of Mystification; The Disintegration of Masonry; The Illuminati Panic and After; The Secret Societies and the French Revolution; Secret Societies and Revolution in Italy 1798-9; Opposition and Conspiracy in France; Napoleonic Italy; The View from St. Petersburg; Myth Making: Buonarroti’s Last Years; more.