Examining elite attitudes to magic in the period between 16, Hunter argues that it wasn’t in fact scientists who did the most to question magic, but rather scholars and, later, freethinkers and deists such as John Toland and Anthony Collins. It is precisely that element of the story to which the eminent historian of English science Michael Hunter turns in his own The Decline of Magic. Thomas was so successful in demonstrating the prevalence of magical beliefs that to some he rendered their decline even more puzzling.

Much of the cultural history of early modern England written in the subsequent half-century has consisted of pale emulations of Thomas’s magisterial work. Most impressive was the sheer range and quantity of the material gathered by Thomas, especially concerning non-elite beliefs. Focusing on 16th- and 17th-century England, Thomas’s book – undoubtedly one of the most important academic monographs written in the last century – pioneered the combination of anthropology and history to demonstrate the prevalence of belief in forces and powers above the course of nature, and the conviction that they might be manipulated.

The locus classicus in this regard is Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic, which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary next year. And so it is surely no coincidence that historians of the pre-modern world have been rather obsessed with it. Magic, in other words, almost invariably comes with historical associations. Newspapers may still print horoscopes, but not even the most devoted followers of the phases of Venus really believe themselves to be in continuity with ancient astrological traditions. If the creators of a television programme want to convey the idea that a fictional society exists in some distant, unspecified past, there is no easier way to signify this than to have a character perform a magical ritual or to speak of demons, fairies or witches. Because that disbelief is so ingrained, magic can function as a convenient shorthand for the alien and, especially, for the pre-modern. But while it is fashionable to point out that we are not as rational as we believe ourselves to be, I think a second explanation stems from what is ultimately a deep-rooted disbelief in magic. There is, of course, a standard explanation for this fascination: magic offers an escape from the dreary, law-governed realities of our everyday lives. Even a brief perusal of the bestseller lists (of books for both children and adults) reveals a continuing fascination with magic.

The decline of magic