Overall, there seems little room for doubt that Stephen Knight’s brain cancer was anything other than natural. The tumour’s progress, histology, its response to X-ray and chemotherapy treatment were all normal. But can a natural brain cancer be induced by unnatural means which cause no visible side effects, cannot be noticed at the time, and are impossible to detect during later tests and examinations?
I still don’t know the answer to that question. And I cannot ignore menacing letters sent by Freemasons to Stephen following The Brotherhood’s publication. They reveal such intense bitterness, as well as a touch of madness, that the writers could have gone on to kill him:
You have been responsible for the persecution of many of our members, who have lost their jobs because of your book. This has caused great hardship to their wives and children, and writers like you ought to know better. I do not know if anyone has committed suicide yet, but it will be you and you alone who has murdered these unfortunate people …
So, what awaits readers in these pages is powerful stuff - enough to drive some Freemasons to distraction - but I believe the book’s continuing appeal lies partly in the fact that Stephen was a genuine seeker after spiritual enlightenment. In his researches he really did set out to discover if it was possible to reach a higher plane of consciousness through Freemasonry. He earnestly wanted to explore its ‘theology’ and its belief in the Great Architect of the Universe (abbreviated to ‘G.A.O.T.U.’ if you happen to find a book of encoded Masonic ceremonies in your grandfather’s attic).
In contrast, when I wrote Inside the Brotherhood I had no desire to go on a spiritual journey because I knew it would reach nowhere. To me the cult’s rituals are man-made mumbo-jumbo, shakily based on myths, fairy-tales and superstitions, some derived from orthodox religions which Freemasonry appropriated to give it a façade of acceptability and went on to distort. Stephen was far less cynical.
Again, I researched my book on Freemasonry already primed in its corrosive capacity to corrupt public life. In television programmes and a book which I had co-authored (The Fall of Scotland Yard), I had investigated Masonic scandals afflicting the police and local government - two areas in which I had also helped Stephen. For me, Freemasonry, whatever its grand claims to morality, had proved the perfect vehicle for grubby, mundane racketeering and back-scratching.
In contrast Stephen had been on a religious quest of his own, as his all too brief life story reveals.
He was born on 26 September 1951 in Hainault, Essex, and retained his roots in the area. He went to West Hatch Technical High School in Chigwell and in 1969 started a series of jobs on local newspapers, including the Horn-church Echo, East London Advertiser and Ilford Recorder where he worked as chief reporter and feature writer. In 1975 he switched to the Travel Trade Gazette but his break came in 1976 when he wrote Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution - a massive commercial success that still sells in substantial numbers today. He was just 25.
By now married and soon to be a father, he next wrote a novel about a series of murders committed in 1902 by the ‘Deptford Strangler’. This book, Requiem at Rogano, was published in 1979. But while his literary career was flourishing, his epilepsy attacks became more frequent. These led to the discovery of the brain tumour (as described above) and its removal by surgeons at the Maudsley Hospital, when all seemed well again. He threw his remarkable energies into researching the Freemasons. During this period he came to see me about my work on the brethren’s murky dealings in local government and the police.
Physically Stephen had a wispy frame and looked (to this tubby observer) in need of good solid meals. I did not know whether to put his debilitated look down to ill-health or if it was his natural build. In due course he published some of what I had told him in The Brotherhood (thanking me in his acknowledgments). I do not think that even he could have foreseen the huge stir that his book would create when it appeared in 1983. To date it has sold a staggering half a million copies.
Seemingly unstoppable, in 1984 he turned out another true-life mystery book: The Killing of Justice Godfrey. This offered a solution to one of the longest unsolved murder cases in British history: the killing of ‘the best JP in London’ in 1678 at a time of anti-Catholic hysteria, greatly inflamed by the poisonous lies of Titus Oates.
It may not be a coincidence that Stephen’s prolonged investigations into religious mania and secret societies overlapped with his decision to embrace the teachings of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the controversial Indian religious leader, whose authorized biography was subtitled, ‘The Most Dangerous Man Since Jesus Christ’. Stephen became his disciple or sannyasin and, for a short while, took to donning the orange robes of the cult in public.
When news of his conversion reached Freemasons’ Hall, the London HQ of the United Grand Lodge of England, the brotherhood used it to try and discredit him. In due course it called him ‘a devotee of the Sri Rajneesh Bagwan cult’ [sic]. Maybe this would convince some people to reject his view of Freemasonry but it struck me as laughable that members of one cult should demean someone else for belonging to another. Not just the pot calling the kettle black, but the men in blue aprons calling the orange people potty.
In fact Stephen followed the Bhagwan for only two years. By the time he died he had been received back into the Church of England. Maybe his death had been hastened by his decision to stop an 18-month course of chemotherapy. This had been prescribed to kill the 30 per cent of the new tumour which surgery could not remove because it was too close to the parts of the brain that control speech and movement. Certainly he knew he was going to die fairly soon so he switched to the natural therapy of a diet of fruit and vegetables to avoid the nausea and vomiting brought on by chemotherapy.
When he died in July 1985 Stephen was just 33 years old. For friends and foes of Freemasonry this fact had serious implications. It convinced some folk that he had indeed been sentenced to death by Masonic justice. To Freemasons the number 33 signifies the 33 degrees of the Rose Croix, an elect ‘Christian’ Masonic order which Stephen had attacked in The Brotherhood. Thirty-three was also Christ’s age when he ‘died’, a death which Rose Croix Masons re-enact in their 31st degree ritual.
To me such hocus-pocus meant nothing. I was just saddened by his death.
More than 20 years after The Brotherhood was first published, new readers may ask several questions. What is the book’s legacy? Has it had a lasting impact on public perceptions of Freemasonry? Has it affected Freemasonry itself?
The importance of The Brotherhood lies not so much in its revelations but in the fact that it brought Freemasonry back into public debate after a century when it had scarcely been discussed. This was not the fault of Freemasons alone. It lay as much with self-censorship by writers, editors and (latterly) radio and TV producers, who, if not Freemasons themselves, may have been scared stiff of retribution from Freemasons above and around them. For generations the brotherhood was spoken of rarely in public, and even then in whispers by bitter men who felt the brotherhood had ruined or victimized them, or by lonely wives wondering if that little case their husbands left home with once a month really did mean he was going to a lodge meeting or if it was just cover for a night out with another woman. The rest was silence.
The Brotherhood shattered that silence but Stephen wasn’t the only person throwing stones at Masonic temples at the time. At last a few newspapers and TV programmes were mocking the institution or raising allegations of corruption. When the book turned into a surprise bestseller, Stephen was invited on phone-in talk shows and defended his book against all-comers. He did well despite his faltering speech brought on by his illness and treatment.
I spent much of the years 1982 to 1984 in the USA, researching and producing a vast TV documentary series on an equally fascinating secret society, the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra, with which Freemasonry shares many characteristics. When Stephen died, I felt privileged to be asked to write a sequel to The Brotherhood. I based my book partly on a stack of 500 letters which had been sent to Stephen’s publisher and his steadfast agent, Andrew Hewson. Many came from disillusioned Freemasons, willing to act as informants