They were called the destroyers of civilization and accused of all mortal sins. They really knew a lot about sin and redemption. This book is about people who revolutionized society's ideas about creativity, mysticism and extreme lifestyle - about British experimenters who experimented on themselves and their listeners. Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Current 93, Nurse With Wound - the history of music at the turn of the century is unthinkable without these groups, their traces are visible everywhere: from the underground to pop culture. Britain's Esoteric Underground is also a genealogy of a rich tradition of English eccentricity and visionary art: the book features the great mystic William Blake, otherworldly-obsessed artists Louis Wain, Charles Sims and Austin Osman Spare, director Derek Jarman and many other seekers of the beyond. It can also be read as a saga about desperate creators, sorcerers and madmen who mixed the boundaries of the real and the imaginary. In the destinies of her characters, incredible ambitions, resistance to everyday life, magic, the queer movement persecuted by the authorities, struggle with themselves and the search for light in the midst of pitch darkness are intertwined. This edition of the famous book by Scottish journalist and prose writer David Keenan is based on the text expanded by the author in 2016.