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Long before Dan Brown's religious history makeover brought Christian mysteries back to the public attention, albeit for really all the wrong reasons, the was one area that had long drawn much attention from the conspiracy theorists. Unlike similar seemingly philanthropic organisation, Freemasonry has been a subject that has always attracted more than its fair share of strange theories.

Due to its antiquity and the relative secrecy many authors over hundreds of years have speculated on the inner workings and core directive of this fraternal organisation. In the past theories have linked the Freemasons to the Knights Templars, the Mafia, the Illuminati and even space-lizards and aliens, such is the scope for anyone wishing to cash in on the subject and sell a few books. The subtitle of Gardner's book "The lost secret of the freemasons revealed" seems to suggest that this book is going down the same road of half-baked theories and unproven sensationalism, thankfully as soon as you begin to read this 400-page tome, you realise that this is not the case.

With the history of Freemasonry being such a fertile garden for sowing seeds of doubt and mystery, intrigue and lies, what has long been overlooked is a factual examination of the starting point of the organisation. Putting aside all the mysterious and tenuous links to secret religious cults and political powers, what Gardner has attempted here is a purely historical re-evaluation of the birth of the organisation. No best guesses, no educated leaps of faith, just a look at the documented evidence to build up his own version of events.

Although the imagery and language that surrounds the rituals and writings of Freemasonry are very obviously Old Testament in flavour, Gardner doesn't fall for the oldest trick of searching for the roots of the organisation there. It would be all to easy to explore the vague connections with Solomon and Hiram Abif in their own era, but as we see from Gardner's book these connections are very much added on after the event and mythology created at a much later date. So if there is no real historical thread linking Freemasonry to its apparent birthplace, where does it begin? By examining the fraternal writings of the organisation Gardner shows us that Freemasonry really evolves from the Royal Society, a scientific brotherhood that took shape under the last of the Stuart kings and flourished under the House of Hanover and its Georgian monarchs.

There is still a hint of mystery however.

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