A Very British Cult

Download or read book A Very British Cult written by Stuart Flinders and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2024-11-07 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A secluded country house. A rogue Anglican Priest. Ceremonial sex and mislaid fortunes. This is the almost-forgotten story of Victorian Britain's strangest religious sect and its wealthy, mostly female, followers who believed they could ascend directly to heaven. Henry James Prince was a rogue Anglican Priest with a flare for the dramatic, and the founder of the Agapemone, or 'Abode of Love'. He also claimed to be the immortal conduit of The Holy Spirit and purportedly engaged in free love and ceremonial sex with his mostly female followers. But Prince's eventual death didn't mark the end of this strange set... he was promptly replaced by another. John Hugh Smyth-Pigott - otherwise known as the Clapton Messiah. The Abode transformed a sleepy, rural corner of Somerset into one of England's most notorious locations. While the followers shut themselves away and waited patiently for the end of the world, outrage grew - the word 'Agapemone' because a byword for licentiousness or idleness, used by Charles Dickens and Ford Maddox Ford. The reclusive Clapton Messiah became a fixture in the nation's papers, with frenzied efforts to discredit the organisation and undermine its leader. And still the cult grew. Expertly drawing on primary sources to tell the story of the Agapemonites in details for the first time, Stuart Flinders shines a light on the people drawn to the cult - the forced marriages; the swindled fortunes; the women condemned to asylums; and those who managed to escape from the Abode. It is also the story of two extraordinary men, whose claims of divinity were at the heart of this very British cult.

Download or read book Your Face Here written by Ali Catterall and published by HarperCollins (UK). This book was released on 2002 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blow Up, Get Carter, Performance, A Clockwork Orange, Quadrophenia, Naked, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels—in recent years, an industry has grown up around certain British cult movies, spawning soundtracks, videos, internet sites, and cinematic re–releases. The makers of these films have become icons of cool, revered throughout the worlds of film, music, and fashion. How has this come about? And what turns these films into lifestyles? Drawing on exclusive interviews with studio bosses, actors, filmmakers, and fans, and touring dozens of film locations,Your Face Herereveals all.

Download or read book The Missing Cryptoqueen written by Jamie Bartlett and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 175 countries, four billion dollars, one scam: the thrilling rise and fall of the biggest cryptocurrency con in history and the woman behind it all In 2016, on stage at Wembley Arena in front of thousands of adoring fans, Dr. Ruja Ignatova promised her followers a financial revolution. The future, she said, belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And the Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptoqueen vowed that she had invented the Bitcoin Killer. OneCoin would not only earn its investors untold fortunes; it would change the world. By March 2017, more than $4 billion had been invested in OneCoin in countries all around the world. But by October 2017, Ruja Ignatova had disappeared, and it slowly became clear that her revolutionary cryptocurrency was not all it seemed. Fortune was left asking, “Is OneCoin the biggest financial fraud in history?” In The Missing Cryptoqueen, acclaimed tech journalist Jamie Bartlett tells the story he began in his smash hit BBC podcast, entering the murky worlds of little-regulated cryptocurrencies and multilevel marketing schemes. Through a globe-crossing investigation into the criminal underworlds, corrupt governments, and the super-rich, he reveals a very modern tale of intrigue, techno-hype and herd madness that allowed OneCoin to become a million-person pyramid scheme—where, at the top, investors were making millions and, at the bottom, people were putting their livelihoods at risk. It’s the inside story of the smartest and biggest scam of the 21st Century—and the genius behind it, who is still on the run.

Download or read book Grimdark written by Tim Linward and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Warhammer 40,000, Britain's most excessive sci-fi franchise, and its vision of a hellish postindustrial future. In the grim darkness of the British imagination, there is only Warhammer 40,000.... Featuring demons, chain swords, and supermen in power armor, Warhammer 40,000 is Britain's most excessive sci-fi franchise. For thirty years this cult war game and its tie-in media have enticed thousands of fans to build, paint, and play with armies of toy soldiers taken from the battlefields of the worst possible future. Why has this fantasy proven so irresistible? Part collection of essays, part ravings of a cult prophet, Grimdark examines Warhammer 40,000's place and impact in pop culture, and how this unique vision of a hellish future arose from the subconscious of postindustrial Britain.

Download or read book Cultish written by Amanda Montell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that you don't realize you're in one till it's too late.”—Refinery29.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

Download or read book The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India written by S. Patterson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was imperial honor and how did it sustain the British Raj? If "No man may harm me with impunity" was an ancient theme of the European aristocracy, British imperialists of almost all classes in India possessed a similar vision of themselves as overlords belonging to an honorable race, so that ideals of honor condoned and sanctified their rituals, connecting them with status, power, and authority. Honor, most broadly, legitimated imperial rule, since imperialists ostensibly kept India safe from outside threats. Yet at the individual level, honor kept the "white herd" together, providing the protocols and etiquette for the imperialist, who had to conform to the strict notions of proper and improper behavior in a society that was always obsessed with maintaining its dominance over India and Indians.Examining imperial society through the prism of honor therefore opens up a new methodology for the study of British India.

Download or read book MOD written by Richard Weight and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited ‘faces’. The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon. Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation – a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution. In Mod, Richard Weight tells the story of Britain’s biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Mod’s heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s – to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Mod–Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran. But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cult’s revival in the late 70s – played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam – but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave. This is the story of Britain’s biggest and brassiest youth movement – and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design – nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of Mod.