Richard Leigh – författare

An international bestseller - the secret history and shocking legacy of the Holy GrailA nineteenth century French priest discovers something in his mountain village at the foot of The Pyrenees which enables him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago.The author's conclusions are persuasive: at the core is not material riches but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than... the Holy Grail.

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'.

The startling, frighteningly convincing sequel to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that reveals the very nature of the Messianic Legacy. After the shocking revelations of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail the authors, in their quest to determine the discrepancies between early and modern 'Christian' thought, found that they were forced to ask such questions as:*Was there more than one Christ?*Was Christ the founder of Christianity?*Were the disciples as peace-loving as it is traditionally assumed?*What links the Vatican, the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, Freemasonry, P2, Opus Dei and the Knights Templar*What mysterious modern crusade implicates British industry, Churchill and de Gaulle, the EEC and Solidarity?The Messianic Legacy offers enthralling new investigations into the shadowy society of the 'Prieure de Sion' - 'The Guardians of the Holy Grail' - as the authors discover the murky world of politics, finance, freemasonry, and religion that exists beneath the most solid and conservative seeming of European institutions: the Church. The ominous global conspiracy of disinformations they uncovered ensures that The Messianic Legacy us an up-to-the-minute thriller and a work of biblical detection that is even more significant than The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

After the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of south-west France in 1208, a Spanish monk - later canonized as St Dominic - took up the cudgels by establishing a kind of secret police to ferret out heresy - thus began the infamous Inquisition. Baigent and Leigh tell the whole extraordinary story, taking it on into the nineteenth century and showing how after the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870 the Vatican attempted to establish new authorities that were an intellectual equivalent of the Inquisition. The Inquisition offers a fascinating narrative account of one of the most influential and horrifying movements in the history of western Europe.

After the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of south-west France in 1208, a Spanish monk - later canonized as St Dominic - took up the cudgels by establishing a kind of secret police to ferret out heresy - thus began the infamous Inquisition. Baigent and Leigh tell the whole extraordinary story, taking it on into the nineteenth century and showing how after the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870 the Vatican attempted to establish new authorities that were an intellectual equivalent of the Inquisition. The Inquisition offers a fascinating narrative account of one of the most influential and horrifying movements in the history of western Europe.

At thirty-seven, Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Reich Reserve Army, was a charismatic figure destined for supreme command. The group of conspirators with whom he conceived the plot to kill Hitler in July 1944 was called 'Secret Germany'. That was also the name of the esoteric circle in which Stauffenberg as a young man had been a disciple of the mystic anti-Nazi magus and poet Stefan George. What was it that motivated this extraordinary aristocratic soldier, with the looks of a Hollywood idol, who was said to be the only man to stare the Fuhrer down until he averted his eyes? For Stauffenberg, the bomb plot was not a political move but a moral and spiritual necessity. After forty-two serious attempts on Hitler's life in the previous twenty years, why did he too fail? Had he succeeded, some say he would have become the de Gaulle of Germany, saviour of the nation soul. Even in failure, there can be no doubt of Stauffenberg's heroism. He stands as atonement for the Third Reich and a resolution of the conflicting myths of German culture. In this remarkable investigation, his whole life explains a troubled past to the present generation of Europeans as few have done in recent history.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves 20 miles east of Jerusalem in 1947 and 1956. Now Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, have succeeded in uncovering what has been described as 'the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century': the story of how and why up to 75 per cent of the eight hundred ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, hidden for some nineteen centuries, have, until very recently, remained concealed from the rest of the world. Through interviews, historical analysis and a close study of both published and unpublished scroll material, the authors are able to reveal the true cause of the bitter struggle between scholars, for these documents disclose nothing less than a new account of the origins of Christianity and an alternative and highly significant version of the New Testament.

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with philosophy, organised religion and the arts for domination over Western civilisation and society. By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and scepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival. In the Elixir and the Stone, Baigent and Leigh argue that this occult revival - and indeed the entire revolution in attitudes which has taken place recently - owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric teaching which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and which then went underground. The authors trace the history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy - which has much in common with contemporary holistic thought - charting its origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magi of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee; prototype of Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest, but he central figure that emerges is that of Faust himself - one of the defining myths of Western civilisation. The Elixir and the Stone is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to a little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover it offers a way of looking at the world that is in one sense 'alternative', but, in another, deeply historical.

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'.

An international bestseller - the secret history and shocking legacy of the Holy GrailA nineteenth century French priest discovers something in his mountain village at the foot of The Pyrenees which enables him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago.The author's conclusions are persuasive: at the core is not material riches but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than... the Holy Grail.

The startling, frighteningly convincing sequel to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that reveals the very nature of the Messianic Legacy. After the shocking revelations of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail the authors, in their quest to determine the discrepancies between early and modern 'Christian' thought, found that they were forced to ask such questions as:*Was there more than one Christ?*Was Christ the founder of Christianity?*Were the disciples as peace-loving as it is traditionally assumed?*What links the Vatican, the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, Freemasonry, P2, Opus Dei and the Knights Templar*What mysterious modern crusade implicates British industry, Churchill and de Gaulle, the EEC and Solidarity?The Messianic Legacy offers enthralling new investigations into the shadowy society of the 'Prieure de Sion' - 'The Guardians of the Holy Grail' - as the authors discover the murky world of politics, finance, freemasonry, and religion that exists beneath the most solid and conservative seeming of European institutions: the Church. The ominous global conspiracy of disinformations they uncovered ensures that The Messianic Legacy us an up-to-the-minute thriller and a work of biblical detection that is even more significant than The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

Coauthors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh recount the events that led to the strange and sudden disappearance of the Knights Templar in the fourteenth century and their reappearance in the court of excommunicate Scottish king Robert the Bruce. Following the survival of certain unexpected Templar traditions, the authors document the evolution of a world-changing order through the birth of the Masonic lodge. They chart the history of Freemasonry through its medieval roots and into the modern era. The book posits that the order’s contribution to the fostering of tolerance, progressive values, and cohesion in English society aided in preempting a French-style revolution in England; that Freemasonry was an essential keystone in the formation of the United States; and that America itself is an embodiment of the ideal “Masonic Republic.” This groundbreaking thread of analysis challenges the accepted traditions of Western history as it is currently taught. What is the true source of our most valued traditions? Twenty years since its original publication, The Temple and the Lodge remains a trenchant and essential edition to any collection of Western history.

Alfred Celestine died in London in 2009 at the age of 60. His work found only occasional publication during his lifetime, and always from small presses. This volume seeks to redress the balance and demonstrate the range of his work, using approximately a third of his total output to do so. As Jeremy Hilton said in a memorial feature in Fire magazine: "...when I heard [Celestine] read in London in 2007, ...I knew I was in the presence of a major, but little-recognised and little-published, poet. What struck me about him was a combination of his powerful use of language, the depth of emotion underlying the linguistic strictness, and his drawing on history, his own personal struggles and the way these interweaved with the struggle of black people as a nation to find their roots and their contemporary forms of expression. All this powerful stuff was, in Al Celestine's work, finding expression through a continuation of the modernist mode....""...what I most want to say about Al Celestine is that he was one of a number of fine poets scattered around London... who wrote calm, quotidian, intensely personal poetry that was also thereby political. And that, like a number of other poets, he was unjustly little read and yet had the guts and the courage, as well as the su ciency of what it is to be a poet to write on and on, through thick and thin. He was a very good poet." -Stephen Watts"II love the way [Alfred Celestine's] poetry works, its strange music and its emotional power... ere's a lot of history in it, a lot of literary allusions, and a lot of his personal life. It is deeply sensuous and muscular too." -Christopher Gutkind"...the moon scythes in and out of [Alfred Celestine's] poetry, sometimes reflecting, sometimes black. is stu isn't an achievement - the word belittles it. It's real." -Keith Jebb