Stephen Knight
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Stephen Knight (September 26, 1951 at Hainault, Essex - 25 July 1985) was a British author.
He is best known for the books The Brotherhood and Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. Both books suggest there is a secret cabal of Masons running most aspects of British society, and have been criticised for their anti-Masonic tone.
The Brotherhood was published at a time when Freemasonry was coming under increased scrutiny in the United Kingdom. Later Parliamentary Inquiries in Britain resulted in Freemasonry becoming a declarable interest in public employment, especially in the Judicial System and Police.[citation needed]
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution suggested that those crimes were part of a conspiracy between Masons and the royal family, a claim which is not generally accepted by historians. The book became popular as the inspiration for works of fiction, among them the 1978 film Murder by Decree by Bob Clark and the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore. The latter was adapted into a film by the Hughes Brothers in 2001.
Stephen Knight also wrote the books Cruelly Murdered, Requiem at Rogano and The Killing of Justice Godfrey. He was a religious follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and, as a part of this interest, took the name Swami Puja Debal. He struggled with epilepsy for much of his life and was discovered to have a brain tumour in 1980 while taking part in the documentary TV programme Horizon. The tumour was removed but returned in 1984. Knight died in 1985.
[edit] Other people with the same name
A different man named Stephen Knight who was the author of Robin Hood - A Mythic Biography (2003) and numerous other books on the Robin Hood legend and other topics such as King Arthur, crime fiction and Geoffrey Chaucer.
There is also a Councillor Stephen Knight, Deputy Leader of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Council and a Welsh poet and novelist Stephen Knight (1960-), author of Mr Schnitzel (2000), winner of the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year in 2001.
