In the ruined abbeys and elaborately decorated caves of England, the notorious Hellfire Club held meetings that shocked and terrified the countryside. London madams scoured the city for young girls to supply the club. Rakes flocked to its meetings.

Yet it was typical of the late eighteenth century that the club's members included famous men of the arts, politicians, even the then-Prime Minister; that a list of members reads like an "honors list" of the eminent men of the day; and that when news of the club's activities leaked out, it caused the biggest political scandal in British history.

Brilliant, perverse, equally capable of elaborately obscene jests and the intricacies of parliamentary politics, the members of the Hellfire Club were the most astonishing men of their time, and the record of their revels has fascinated and repulsed the world for two centuries.