Just Finished Reading: Witchcraft – A History by P G Maxwell-Stuart (FP: 2000) [150pp] 

Witchcraft and the witches who perform it have been around for a very long time. They were written about in Antiquity and, no doubt, existed long before the written word. So why is it that the European witch ‘craze’ and the trials that followed suddenly explode in the Late Medieval/Early Modern Period? It's a very good question and the lack of a glib answer impressed me. 

As with most cultural phenomena, the ideas circulating around witchcraft are complex. The turn against the practice has no easy answer. No doubt the turmoil of the period heated up any witch hunting – we are notorious for our scapegoats after all – but it was more than that. Extra complexity is provided by the fact that not all countries, or regions within a country, or towns within a region responded to the ‘problem’ in the same way. There was a similar diversity of opinion both between and within Catholic and Protestant beliefs after the Great Schism. An equally complex and rather mysterious question is why the craze for witch trials passed into history after around 150 years of periods of panic and recovery. Was it the growing so-called Enlightenment which resulted in a feeling of scepticism sweeping across Europe? Was it growing prosperity or a feeling of being more in control? Was it growing literacy and a more general understanding of how things worked without the need to conceive of magic or supernatural interventions? The author was brave enough to leave the answer largely unconfirmed. Both the origins and demise of the witch panic in Europe are complicated, diverse and unconfirmed. 

Magic, in its MANY forms, has existed for as long as humanity itself. It did not emerge in the late Middle Ages, nor did it vanish with the coming of the Enlightenment and the Modern age. Magic, and indeed witchcraft, is still practiced today all across the world. Even so-called ‘normal’ people cross their fingers, throw salt over their left shoulder, avoid cracks in the pavement and a thousand other things that humans have been doing to ward off ‘bad luck’ or evil spirits all across the globe. Nothing has really changed. Modern witchcraft, often referred to as Wicca, is a booming business with books, websites, conferences, equipment and consumables available at the touch of a button. Without an overarching belief system or dogma witches, in groups or solitary, can create a system that fulfils their needs and craft both spells and ceremonies that works for them. Defining a witch today is no easy task!  

I picked up this slim hardback book decades ago and have only just plucked it off my shelves. I was impressed by the author’s even handedness as well as his clear acknowledgement that the subject is complex and that research into it is far from complete. It was both a useful refresher for me and a prompt to read further into this fascinating subject. Recommended and much more to come.

"Cartography is another name for stories told by winners."

Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees.

Just Finished Reading: American Cultural History – A Very Short Introduction by Eric Avila (FP: 2018) [126pp] 

American culture has dominated the world throughout most of the 20th century and beyond with movies, music and other media being instantly recognisable in country after country despite cultural and language barriers. Part of the reason for such a wide appeal has been the cultural melting pot in the US itself aided by the original mix of cultures from England, Spain and France as well as local Native culture and the, no doubt unintentional, importation of African culture from the slave population. 

With the arrival of newspapers, the railroads and increased immigration the culture of America both exploded and diversified across the continent along with the waves of migration westwards supported by ideas of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and the idea of the Frontier. The following ‘Gilded Age’, fuelled in no small part by the philanthropy of Robber Barons resulted in some of the iconic architecture still standing today as well as the rise of advertising, magazine culture and lavish events such as World’s Fairs.  

The post-WW2 suburbanization of American culture produced Film Noir, TV and Disney. But it also produced The Twilight Zone and the House Committee on Un-American Activities and shopping malls – to say nothing of Motown music and Las Vegas gambling.  

Covering this and much else – I don’t intend to precis the entire (if short) book – this is a fast, high-level and broad brush look at American culture from its earliest days to the edge of the 21st century. For those paying attention I don’t think you’ll learn much new here. We’ve been drowning in American culture, from Coca-Cola to Hollywood blockbusters for generations now. But this does provide some structure to the outpouring and, as is often the case, a more than decent Bibliography to dig deeper into the subject if so desired. As both a long-time fan, and long-time critic, of American culture I shall be doing just that. More to come. Reasonable.        

Happy Birthday: Robert Dennis Harris CBE (born 7 March 1957) is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, he is best known for his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His later works are varied in settings but are mostly set after 1870.

Several of Harris's novels have been adapted into films, including The Ghost Writer (2010) and An Officer and a Spy (2019), for which he co-wrote the screenplays with director Roman Polanski, and Conclave (2024).

After leaving Cambridge, Harris joined the BBC and worked on news and current affairs programmes such as Panorama and Newsnight. In 1987, at the age of 30, he became political editor of The Observer. He later wrote regular columns for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Harris co-wrote his first book, A Higher Form of Killing (1982), with fellow BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman: this was a study of chemical and biological warfare. Other non-fiction works followed: Gotcha! The Government, the Media and the Falklands Crisis (1983) covering the Falklands War; The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), a profile of Kinnock just after he became leader of the Opposition; Selling Hitler (1986), an investigation of the Hitler Diaries scandal; and Good and Faithful Servant (1990), a study of Bernard Ingham, press secretary to Margaret Thatcher while she was prime minister.

[Harris is an auto-buy for me. I've either read or at least own most of his novels including Fatherland (1992), Enigma (1995), Archangel (1998), Pompeii (2003), Imperium (2006), The Ghost (2007), Lustrum (2009), The Fear Index (2011), An Officer and a Spy (2013), Dictator (2015), Conclave (2016), Munich (2017), The Second Sleep (2019), V2 (2020), Act of Oblivion (2022), Precipice (2024), Agrippa (2026). I've enjoyed everything I've read by him with one notable exception. But I haven't let that put me off reading more. I'll just stick to his historical novels!]