BOOK OF THE DAY: The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies, Evelyn Lord, Yale University Press; 247pp; £19.99
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS in the present day would have felt at home among the elite in 18th-century Ireland and Britain.
Social life in London, Edinburgh and Dublin revolved around clubs and societies, with many of them nothing more than excuses for drinking and debauchery.
Some of the more colourful were the Monday Club (for businessmen), the Mollies Club (for transvestites), the Sweating Club (a pure drinking club) and the Spendthrift Club (for members who refused to spend more than four pence a night).
Others were the invention of 18th-century satirists, such as the No Nose Club (for men who had lost their noses from syphilis) and the Farting Club (no explanation really necessary).
Women had their own clubs. The Jezebel Club was for prostitutes, while the Fair Assembly (which was much more shocking and unconventional) was for young women who wanted to promote female education and campaign against the exploitation of women.
In this world, there was one club which stood out from all the others.
This was the notorious Hell-Fire Club, formed in 1721, and reincarnated throughout the century under different names and in different places.
To outsiders, the club was not only sinful but evil, formed so that members could meet together to toast the Devil, ridicule the Holy Trinity, and engage in depraved sexual practices.
Much of this was pure invention, based on gossip, supposition and furious speculation.
Really, the club was an opportunity for boys to behave badly, drink to excess and take advantage of whatever was on offer.
The Medmenham Friars (or the Knights of St Francis) was a later incarnation of the Hell-Fire Club. This group met at Medmenham Abbey in Buckinghamshire for conversation, convivial dinners and sex with "the sisterhood" (local girls or prostitutes who dressed as nuns).
Founded by the appropriately named Sir Francis Dashwood in the 1750s, the club included many MPs among its membership, and allowed its members to indulge in the 18th-century appetite for fancy dress.
Its motto, translated as "do what you will", meant members were allowed to engage in excessive drinking, sacrilege and unlimited sexual activity within the abbey.
It was only a matter of time before the Protestant elite in Ireland established their own hell-fire clubs.
The first was rumoured to have been founded in 1735 by the earl of Rosse, a man already notorious because of his fondness for blasphemy, obscene wit and greeting visitors in the nude.
The stories about the first Irish Hell-Fire Club come from an unreliable oral tradition, embellished and exaggerated until they became nothing more than stories to terrify unruly children.
It was said that at meetings a seat was always left empty for the Devil, and that the club mascot (a fierce black cat) was always served first at dinner because it was actually the Devil in disguise.
There was even less to the Irish hell-fire clubs than their British counterparts.
In Ireland, the members viewed sex and blasphemy as distractions from the real business of drinking and chose the name purely to shock the public and make themselves appear more interesting and dangerous than they actually were.
What we learn in this enjoyable read is that the hell-fire clubs were magnets for all kinds of lurid speculation, but usually they were just opportunities for role-playing.
Separating the myth from the reality, the book provides a wonderful insight into the world of the elite in the eighteenth century.
That said, I'm not sure if I should put it on the reading list for my undergraduates.
• Dr Patrick M Geoghegan teaches history at Trinity College Dublin. His book, King Dan: the Rise of Daniel O'Connell, will be published on October 24th