Magic
The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell
Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction
Tarot isn’t very old or esoteric – but it does work
Among my many fake and useless skills, I’m a reasonably decent tarot reader. I can do one for you now…
‘If you steal this book I’ll beat your brains out’
Curses on the book thief from Latin and Old English sources range from the venomous to the sadistic to the mind-twistingly gruesome
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
The magic of carefully crafted words
A collection of essays, poems and fiction – ‘offcuts’ of a lifetime spent ‘working with a pen’ – marks Alan Garner’s 90th year
Why we love to be baffled
So much of life is a search for answers. How to get ahead, how to earn more money, how to…
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise
A beginner’s guide to witchcraft
Next year, Exeter University will offer an MA in Magic and Occult Science: the first of its kind in a…
Cell division
The Angel of Prisons dramatises the life of the penal reformer Elizabeth Fry, who lived near Canning Town. She married…
A magical epic
When the first volume of Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy appeared in 2019, it was quickly recognised as a masterly…
The art of listening
There’s a great documentary film on Netflix at the moment about the late artist Bob Ross, he of the happy…
The ghost in the corner of the room
Strange, really, that the scheduled output of traditional broadcasters became known as ‘terrestrial’ television, given that TV is an etheric…
Monsters and miracles
Mircea Cartarescu likens his native Romania to a Latin American country stranded in eastern Europe. Certainly, his writing delivers not…
The Red Hand Files
Two years ago, the songwriter Nick Cave told his fans that he’d speak to them directly — not through an…
Rival magicians
Mordew ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, as Elton John nearly sang. If they escape the ravages…
The objects that sound witchiest on paper just look sad: Spellbound reviewed
Just in front of me, visiting Spellbound at the Ashmolean last week, was a very rational boy of about seven…
Away with the angels?
John Dee liked to talk to spirits but he was no loony witch, says Christopher Howse
Sex, violence and lettuces
There is something cruelly beautiful, delightfully frustrating and filthily gorgeous about a Scarlett Thomas novel. Two family trees open and…
Strange ways
BBC One’s 2015 choice of Sunday-night drama series is beginning to resemble the career of the kind of Hollywood actor…
A choice of children’s books
A children’s author and illustrator, Jonathan Emmet, created a stir recently by saying that women are effectively gatekeepers of children’s…
A fascist’s fireside chat
This book may sound like it’s going to be about high fashion, but it’s actually about Nazism, satanism, incest and…
Men of mystery
People, they say, want different things from a book over the summer than they do the rest of the year.…
