by Cecil Roth
Production by Christopher Sykes
The King and the Cabbalist is best described as a piece of historical detective work in the byways of the eighteenth century. The King was Baron Neuhoff, alias King Theodore of Corsica; the Cabbalist was Dr. Hayim Jacob Samuel Falk, a prominent figure in that obscure and discreditable world of mystics and necromancers. Falk specialised in the discovery of hidden treasure, and treasure was what the King most required in his needy London days. So these two arch-charlatans met and their subsequent activities were recorded by two worthy biographers-Falk by his Sancho Panza-like servant, the King by Horace Walpole.