“Billed as an enquiry into those occult undercurrents which flowed beneath the social revolution of the 1960s, this book burgeons over the course of 500 pages, into something approaching a magical history of the twentieth century – a primer in the significance of Madame Blavatsky, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, H.P. Lovecraft, Conan the Barbarian, L. Ron Hubbard, Erich von Daniken, Uri Geller, Anton LaVey, the Rolling Stones, and the demon Choronzon. Colin Wilson and Marianne Faithfull are thanked in the acknowledgements.

Gary Lachman, once the bassist for the pop band Blondie, makes a likeable, unpretentious, knowledgeable guide, lacing his text with hints of autobiography which suggest the glamour of his past. While far from being a sceptic, Lachman is nonetheless capable of bracing cynicism when required. Pleasingly, his book is filled with terrific stories, the veracity of which he neither accepts without question nor dismisses out of hand. The most intriguing tales include Charles Manson auditioning for the Monkees, the 1974 ‘kidnap’ of David Bowie by what the singer claimed were ‘ a warlock and two witches’ who wanted him’ to meet the Devil’ and, somehow most cherishably, a description of a Sicilian holiday embarked on in 1955 by the sexologist Alfred Kinsey and the experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, in which they made a pilgrimage to the ruins of the former home of Aleister Crowley, where they set to work at once on a project of restoration, soon discovering obscene murals of ‘ one-eyed demons’ and a ‘ magic circle, covered over by a concrete floor.’ “ Jonathan Barnes in The Times Literary Supplement