The Great Satanic Swindle
In the 1980s, as the Satanic Panic took hold around the UK, a mysterious stranger arrived in a small Sussex village and told a tale of witchcraft, trapped souls and a life-and-death struggle with Satan himself. A group of church-goers, millionaires and aristocrats stepped in to save him, and things got very weird.
Derry Mainwaring Knight was an occultist and convicted con man; the Reverend John Baker was his mark. The village of Newick – a nexus of belief near which evangelical Christianity, new religious movements and the Sussex legend landscape meet – was their stage. The Great Satanic Swindle is the story of the bizarre friendship between these two and how it played out in what the tabloids called ‘the trial of the century’, involving peers of the realm and prostitutes; an Archbishop and a High Sheriff; the ‘Chief of all Satanists’ and some of the biggest businessmen in the land.
In this trial, and in this story, the question at hand came down to only one thing: What does it mean to believe? Using original archival research, unearthed audio recordings and Derry Mainwaring Knight’s own writings, the Great Satanic Swindle looks at a definitive story of a nation gripped by madness – religious mania, class conflict, fear and loathing in the ’80s countryside so odd it would make a Midsomer writer blush.
Bio:
Justin Hopper is a British-American writer whose work is concerned with the intersection of landscape, memory and myth. This includes books (The Old Weird Albion, Obsolete Spells), spoken-word recordings (Chanctonbury Rings, the Path; Ghost Box Records) and performances from the Brighton Festival to the National Gallery and many more.
Don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
