All in one place A nasty end A fi ne addition to Royal Arch history

The Authors’ Club was founded in 1891. Aside from professional writers, its membership included significant establishment figures who could show that they were published authors. Out of the club came, fi rst, the Authors’ Lodge in 1910 and, four years later, the Authors’ Chapter. Both enjoy the same pleasing number, 3456, and both – more pleasing still – thrive today.

This fi ne book opens with a reproduction of a letter from the club secretary in 1909, bearing a list of members on the letterhead. A notable bunch, they included Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the then poet laureate, the authors of King Solomon’s Mines and The Prisoner of Zenda , and Charles Burgess Fry: cricketer, quadruple Oxford Blue, classicist, writer and more.

John Arlott described Fry as, ‘probably the most variously gifted Englishman of any age’. Not satisfied with 94 fi rst-class centuries and having twice taken 10 wickets in a match, he invented the diabolo toy, could leap from a standing start on to a mantlepiece – turning round in mid-air and bowing on landing – and was offered the throne of Albania, which he politely declined.

Listed also were others with names redolent of that golden age: Morley Roberts, Poultney Bigelow and Egerton Castle. What a pity that in our benighted times, such characterful names have all but disappeared.

I must stop digressing, however, and get on reviewing the book, so here goes.

This excellent collection is a sample of the many talks on Royal Arch Masonry given in the Authors’ Chapter from 1916 to the present day. Deftly edited by Ron Selby, it is illustrated well and attractively produced. Chapter & Verse is an intriguing display of interesting, erudite, and wide-ranging scholarship.

If FMT tolerated anything as vulgar as a star rating, I would unhesitatingly give this book five.

Review by Cestrian

Chapter & Verse: 100 Years of Royal Arch Talks, edited by Ron Selby, Lewis Masonic, 307pp, £21

Shedding light on their rise and fall

The Crusades were almost 200 years of war, sieges, massacres and mayhem. The Knights Templar were established in 1119, 20 years after the First Crusade had successfully captured Jerusalem. Between then and their demise in 1312, they fought with varying degrees of success during the next eight Crusades.

With papal recognition as a monastic order, they adopted many of the practices of monks, such as prayer, chastity and poverty. However, they were required to be ready to go into battle against the enemies of the Church.

Although they were well equipped and disciplined, they suffered horribly on the field of battle. When they were defeated at the Battle of La Forbie in 1244 after the Sixth Crusade, only one in 10 of the Knights Templar survived. Those who were captured were usually executed. In addition, funding their expeditions was a fi nancial burden and required constant fundraising. The order maintained more than 4,000 horses, as well as mules and camels.

West has compressed into 160 pages what several historians have taken many volumes to describe. As well as distinguishing between those crusades that were significant and the minor ones, he details the brutality and hardship, the ever-changing political allegiances in Europe and how the Near East was ravaged by Saladin, Genghis Khan, the Mongols and the Mamluks.

It all came to a nasty end for the Knights Templar. West advances several plausible reasons why Pope Clement V turned against them. Moreover, King Philip IV of France did not even bother to wait for the Pope to decide on their fate. He arrested and tortured many of them and their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake on an island in the Seine.

It should, of course, be made clear that the medieval Knights Templar have no direct link with the modern-day Masonic Knights Templar.

Review by Richard Jaffa

The Knights Templar in the Holy Land, by David West, Hamilton House Publishing, 176pp, £11.99

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