Magic, by Ricky Jay – review

People, they say, want different things from a book over the summer than they do the rest of the year. If, by chance, you are looking for a book that will both give you a hernia and teach you how to make a bridge disappear, this could be just the thing for you.

The motorbike messenger who delivered my copy of Magic had to come in for a glass of water and complained that the effort of carrying it had made his legs bowed. It is, quite simply, the largest book I have ever tried to read — the literary equivalent of the Great Bed of Ware.

So what’s inside it? An awful lot of pictures, beautifully reproduced, interspersed with essays on the history of magic. Handily, these come in English, French and German, in case you want to get some European pals round for a simultaneous reading — there’s plenty of room for everyone.

Magic, not altogether surprisingly, took off as a public spectacle during the Age of Reason, when the desire to believe in the inexplicable underwent a sudden, indirect, surge. For a long time, China was held to be the source of the most powerful magic — it being very far away and full of famously inscrutable people. By the end of the 19th century, the theatres of London, Paris and New York were full of magicians with shaved heads and droopy moustaches and names like Fu Manchu.

Many, like Fu Manchu himself — real name David Bamberg — had never been further east than Barking, and therefore had to keep their stage patter to a minimum. One man, Ching Ling Soo (aka William Robinson) only ever spoke on stage once. This was when his famous Bullet Catching Trick went horribly wrong and he was shot through the heart.