Hello and welcome! As of December 1, 2025,we are delighted to announce the launch of our new season and new format.

Starting next Monday, December 8, MAGI will begin alternating weekly podcasts between audio academic papers and interviews of academic historians.

True to our name and mission we will deliver international academic papers by Professor Gerard Carruthers in Scotland, Dr. Robert James in Australia, Professor Kenyo Ishmael in Brazil, and others.

These will be available on alternating weeks. We believe that This is the most ambitious sustained schedule of Masonic scholarship ever produced in audio!

Next Monday begins our new season with the first long paper: Geoffrey Markham’s: “Some Problems with English Masonic History” published in 1997. A respected English barrister, Markham provides a solid, analytical, foundation for the first interview on 15 December: which sees the return of Prof John Dickie, Author of: “The Craft: How Freemasons Made the Modern World” to discuss Masonic secrecy.

Listen to the beginning of A.G. Markham's Inaugural paper in Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076, London in 1996, publish in AQC v. 110, 1997. Read by MAGI Robert L.D. Cooper, PM QC 2076

“This paper consists of comment on some of the problems arising in the history of English craft Masonry in the period ending with the Union of the Grand Lodges in 1813. The notes and appendices to the printed version of the paper explain generalisations and include important further points which time does not allow to be included in this present spoken narrative. I continue next with a brief survey of familiar ground as preparation for what is said later.

In the 1600s Freemasonry was restricted to the British Isles and was a private matter, rarely recorded in writing; least of all in Ireland, and less so in England than in Scotland. This is a major problem; and it is surprising that we know as much as we do about English Masonry of the 1600s. It is possible to see the existence of a remarkable brotherhood of non-operative Mason, based on well recognised custom (including, notably, secret modes of recognition and those curious archaic documents the Old Charges), spread more or less all over the nation, crossing class boundaries in a very class conscious age: harmoniously and convivially uniting men, including, I would accept, those of differing political persuasions and practising mutual charity. But this evidence is limited in detail and does not extend to dispelling the mystery of its origins, a mystery, which, though since to some extent cherished by masons, has also lent itself to Misinterpretation by writers, both masonic and anti-masonic”

Listen to the supporting Appendices of A.G. Markham's in for Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076, London in 1996. Published in AQC v. 110, 1997. Read by MAGI Robert L.D. Cooper, PM QC 2076

APPENDIX I: THE MASON WORD

APPENDIX II: SOME RECENT PRECONCEIVED THEORIES OF ORIGIN