Illuminati

The History of a Conspiracy Theory

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The first complete history of the world’s most notorious secret society – and its bizarre and dangerous afterlife that we’re still reckoning with today.

On 1 May 1776 a radical young professor named Adam Weishaupt founded a secret society with the aim of infiltrating and overturning the system of world power. Many influential figures joined, united by scandalously liberal ideals, elaborate ciphers, and melodramatic rituals. They called themselves the Order of the Illuminati.

Within a decade, they were gone – outed and banned by the authorities, their leaders prosecuted and exiled, their project a dismal failure. Yet millions of people maintain the Illuminati lives on, manipulating world events from 9/11 to the Covid pandemic and the career of Taylor Swift.

Illuminati is the gripping story of the Order’s rise, fall, and enduring legacy: the idea that the Order’s collapse was a sham and its hold on power complete. First a means of explaining the shocking violence of the French Revolution, historian Michael Taylor reveals the ways in which people have reinvented this conspiracy time and again at moments of spectacular change, fear and perceived betrayal – exposing the power of conspiracist thinking as never before.

‘A dazzling jewel of a book’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

‘The fascinating true story of the conspiracy theory that changed everything’ DORIAN LYNSKEY

© Michael Taylor 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

This is dazzling history that tells us a great deal about society now. A jewel of a book
Sathnam Sanghera

Taylor brilliantly outlines the petty squabbles that beset [the actual] Illuminati . . . Taylor's meticulous account [then] shows how two historians in the 19th century traced the origins of the French Revolution and its descent into extreme violence to the Illuminati . . . [and] In a repeating pattern [to] every subsequent convulsion in world history . . . Taylor patiently traces details of increasingly bizarre arguments and propositions with good humour and a measure of understanding. To those who wonder whether this strange nonsense really matters, there are plenty of 'real world' examples – not of Illuminati influence, but of the consequences of disturbed people believing dangerous nonsense
David Horspool, Oldie

About Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor is the author of Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion, which was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize 2024 and chosen as a Book of the Year by the Economist, TLS and Waterstones, as well as The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and chosen as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. He was born in 1988 and graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies.

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