The Other Pandemic by James Ball review — how QAnon went viral

Peeping over the rocky Cornish coast at Tintagel sits Camelot, a castle with historical pretensions. The design, slightly too cute, betrays its recent 19th century origin, but the hotelier John Mappin insists it overlooks land where the mythical King Arthur once held court. This is far from his most eccentric belief: whipping in the wind above the central castellation is a large white flag bearing the letter Q in green.

Mappin is a leading figure in the UK chapter of QAnon, a conspiracy theory turned global movement that reckons the world is controlled by a cabal of Satanic child-sacrificing paedophiles who can be stopped only by one man: Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton is the purported head of the cabal, although she may have ceded the