The loss of enchantment

Children who have seen an electronic dinosaur wheel across the sky are not much amazed when a man with his sleeves rolled up takes the rabbit out of the hat. Manual illusions have been overtaken by the digital kind, and traditional conjuring is mostly for the nostalgia market. But it finds its niches; Michael Bailey, a former chairman of the Magic Circle (the illusionists’ upmarket trade union) who has written its centennial history, modestly describes himself as ‘the leading British corporate magician’. Far from restoring the fortunes of companies that someone has sawn in half, he helps senior managers with the arcane business of bonding.

Conjuring has gone respectable. For much of its long history it was anything but that. Promoters of dodgy cults used its tricks to lure the credulous, table-turners and

Most popular

Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

spirit-rappers enlisted it to snare their customers.