A kaleidoscopic story of myth, Spiritualism, and the Victorian search for Utopia from one of the brightest and most original non-fiction writers at work today. In 1872 there was a bizarre eruption of religious mania in Hampshire's New Forest. Its leader was Mary Ann Girling, a Suffolk farmer's daughter who claimed to be the female Christ and whose sect, the Children of God, lived in imminent anticipation of the Millennium. It was rumoured that Mrs Girling mesmerised her supporters, literally hypnotising them to keep them in her power, other reports claimed that the sect danced naked, and murdered their illegitimate offspring in their Utopian home at 'New Forest Lodge.' Through Mary Ann's story and the spiritual vortex around her, Philip Hoare takes us deeper into the pagan heart of the New Forest.… (more)