Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0953739864 ISBN 13: 9780953739868

Publisher: Sinclair-Stevenson, 2001

This is the story of a how a little known manuscript in a Masonic Lodge in Kirkwall has become one of the most important historical documents of the Middle Ages. It is also the story of the Templars, who were its guardians, and of what happened to them after the Crusades. Although references to this famous order of military knights rarely appears in standard histories of the time, a great deal of information about them can be gleaned from other, more esoteric sources, such as sculpture and architecture. Suppressed by Philip of France out of greed, the Templars were gradually driven underground in more and more European countries. Yet they continued to exist, still guarding the knowledge and relics that they had gathered for the defence of the Holy Land. It is this that connects all this to Henry St Clair, Earl of Orkney and Grand Master of the Knights Templar and discoverer of America. All of these threads come together in one extraordinary scroll still in Kirkwall which revelas in full the secrets of the Knights Templar.

Review:

"That chapel proud, Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie. Each Baron, for a sable shroud Sheathed in his iron panoply. - Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 'Comprehensive and scholarly... Andrew Sinclair has written a fascinating book' - The Literary Review 'Andrew Sinclair guides us through this romantic story that has preoccupied poets, priests and pilgrims from Zeus

About the Author:

Andrew Sinclair, a direct descendant of Prince Henry St Clair, is a leading novelist, historian and film-maker and lives in London. He did graduate work at Harvard and Columbia before teaching at Cambridge and London. His books include biographies of Jack London, Warren Harding and Che Guevera. His most recent work is the epic novel, Blood and Kin.