THE SEVEN ORDEALS OF COUNT CAGLIOSTRO Iain McCalman, Century, London, 2003. Hardback, 272 pages, £17.99. ISBN 0-7126-2348-5

If you are looking for a modestly priced Christmas present for a Brother mason – or for yourself – look no further. The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro is a rare combination of scholarship and style that diverts, educates and entertains in equal and generous measure. Of particular interest to readers of Freemasonry Today must be Iain McCalman’s colourful depiction of the rich diversity of masonic custom and practice that existed in the second half of the eighteenth century.
    Count Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo in the back streets of Palermo in 1743. Between that date and his death, in 1795, as a prisoner of the Inquisition in the impregnable fortress of San Leo, he enjoyed and suffered something like Shakespeare’s seven ages of man’ – hence the book’s title. He was, by turns: Freemason, Necromancer, Shaman, Copt, Rejuvenator and Heretic. The narrative follows Giuseppe and his beautiful wife, Seraphina - whom he was quite prepared to hire out as a source of income from time to time - across the whole of Europe. On his first visit to London, he – and Seraphina! – were accepted into the Esperance Lodge at the King’s Head tavern in Soho, where Giuseppe’s initiation rites included the discharge of a pistol close to his head. On purchasing a pamphlet from a barrow in Leicester Square, he subsequently discovered the true, Egyptian origins of Freemasonry and began a crusade to convert the Craft to his creed.
    In St. Petersburg he managed to fall foul of Catherine the Great, and in Paris he was involved in the notorious affair of Marie-Antoinette’s stolen necklace and forged love letters. The slum-boy from Palermo was genuinely influential in the French Revolution. He knew Casanova – a fellow Freemason – and his character has been alluded to in works by writers including Alexander Dumas, Thomas Carlyle, Friedrich von Schiller and Umberto Eco. Count Cagliostro was the model for Sarastro in Mozart’s Masonic opera The Magic Flute.
    Iain McCalman was born in Nyasaland, was professor of the Humanities Research Centre at Australia’s National University and is now a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of All Souls College. Oxford. A dry, academic wit pervades the pages of this delightful depiction of a character whose life and exploits seem beyond the imagination of Hollywood.
    Andrew Montgomery