Gerald Gardner

A British civil servant, occultist and anthropologist. Wrote the definitive 'guides' to neopaganism and popularised it with High Magic's Aid (1949) a book about Wicca in the form of a novel, Witchcraft Today (1954) in which he gave additional details about the faith, and The Meaning of Witchcraft which gave a detailed history of Wicca in Northern Europe.

It is probable that he fabricated the sources for his first book and his claims to have joined a coven in 1939.