Queen Juliana’s weakness for the preternatural had landed her back in Dutch newspaper headlines: She had invited to the palace a crackpot from California.

“In the past,” grumbled Amsterdam’s De Volkskrant, “the Dutch press was blamed—and not entirely without reason —for too long concealing the fact that there swarmed about the court people whose heads were too much in the clouds.” The Dutch press could hardly be accused of concealing the facts last…