A look at the use of magic in England from the fourteenth century onwards. So-called 'cunning folk' were used throughout these centuries to provide services such as finding missing items or people, providing love or fertility charms, curing illness, & even the odd get-rich-quick scheme. They were viewed as different to witches (who could also be either male or female), as witches were viewed as practising magic to do harm, whilst cunning folk were mainly thought to be trying to help.

This is an interesting & informative read with a lot of information packed into its pages. Personally, I felt that it became a little dry to read in places - the curse (pun intended) of academic work - but it always keeps the reader engaged enough to continue. The crossover with Catholicism & calling on the saints for aid was particularly interesting to me as was the evolution of the laws & societal viewpoints on magic which gradually shifted into something more malevolent & culminated in the witch trials. One slight let-down (which is not the author's fault) is that the records so often don't tell us what happened afterwards to the people involved in the cases discussed. Overall it was a very enjoyable read.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Random House UK/Vintage/Bodley Head, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Horoscopes, Palm readings at Fairs, Clairvoyance, the Lottery, spinning a wedding ring over a pregnant belly to predict the sex of the unborn babe, we all have superstitious habits, and these are seen as harmless fun and certainly not taken as a matter of life and death.
In this fascinating and very detailed book, Magic was seen as a public service. It was the perception of Good Magic that could ease the mind over matters of love and marriage, the health of the family, and comfort when everything was going wrong, it provided the easy solace that religion sometimes neglected.
White witches were usually wise women, skilled in healing and the use of herbs, they were called upon for childbirth matters and usually held in high regard, until events turned sour.
We also read about the hunt for the Philosophers Stone, the use of Alchemy to find the source of good health and everlasting life. There are also examples of many famous people who consulted such cunning folk, to help foretell the future of their health, marriage prospects, which side to support in the case of war, and the search for precious metals.
I found this a most enjoyable and informative book.I really enjoyed reading about the many famous people through the ages who have consulted such wise people. The question posed was, do we still need Magic in our life? I believe we need something to give us hope that things will get better, it may all be Hocus Pocus, but like our ancestors, it gives comfort to our stressed modern times.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers, Random House UK, and Vintage for my advanced copy, freely given in exchange for my honest review. A five star rating.
I will leave a copy of this review to Goodreads and Amazon UK upon publication.

A fascinating and endearing look at the historical significance of the world of spells, incantations, magic and trickery. Presented with historical court cases involving charlatans and secular persecution, the enduring belief in ‘luck’ and the supernatural still exists to the present day.

A wonderfully comprehensive book on the subject of magic and its practitioners. Not a dry academic book at all, full of life and stories. A deep dive into a well researched and fascinating historical topic.

A fascinating and well researched book about uses of and belief in magic in the 17th century. I was interested to find that, contrary to many things I've read, this was often a more benign magic than witch finders would have us believe and was used to find lost objects and maybe find love. Stories from contemporaneous records and court reports added poignancy and humanity to the text and I found it an enjoyable read. Maybe one to dip in and out of at leisure rather than reading in one go.
Thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley.

This books explores a side of witchcraft you often don’t get to hear too much about. When hearing about witches in the 14th-17th centuries it’s usually witch trials that are the focus. However this book looks beyond this and investigates the cunning folk, wise women and healers who were seen to be practicing good and helpful magic. Often for healing, but often to help locate lost objects or improve a marriage. While there were instances of these practitioners facing prosecution, largely they were tolerated and often sought out for assistance.

This book was well researched and I was impressed at the level of the detail the author was able to achieve in some of the cases. I particularly liked the parts about the theatre and cases of faeries.

A good read for those who would like to look at the history of witchcraft from a different lens.

Cunning Folk is a fascinating look into how people during the pre-modern era viewed magic. Not the magic you might expect from the witch trials of later years (in fact, this book stresses repeatedly that there was a distinction between the cunning folk of the title and genuine witches), but the kind of magic used for tasks like finding property, love spells, getting rich quick, and more. It's a very absorbing read and I think would be regardless, but Tabitha Stanmore adds an extra dimension to it with her writing, making the narrative even more compelling and bringing the people mentioned in the book's pages to life. On top of this, it's clearly also thoroughly researched, while recognising too the limits of its research when most of the evidence comes from court depositions. Definitely one not to be missed.

I have read this book because almost everyone I know is obsessed with magic, and I know very little about it.
It is not only a scholarly history of magic, it has wit and variation.
It covered lots of areas that I did not consider as magic, and brought out a lot of facts about history and social history.
Brilliant.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What an amazing book. I’ve always been interested in witches because of the way they were both used and vilified and subjected to unthinkable brutality. I have to say I knew little about cunning folk and thought they were the stuff of legend, Far from it! This is a real step back in time. Clearly there’s a huge amount of research to pull together the detail but there’s a real sense of place and people and some of the stories of how these gifted individuals were used is mind blowing. Tabitha Stanmore also draws some parallels with modern times and there are glimpses of the way in which society will uickly to to anything in the hope of salvation or cure in a time of crisis.

I’ve enjoyed every bit of this story. It’s packed with detail of incidents and is a rather unique slice of social history. I’m unaware of another title that looks specifically into this era some 500 years ago from this specific angle. It’s fascinating.

Historian Tabitha Stanmore transports us to a time when magic was used day-to-day as a way to navigate life's challenges and to solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance. The very epitome of page-turner with a chilling storyline that grips from the first.

A well researched and cleverly nuanced read.

Hundreds of years ago, before medicines and social media, if you were sick, or in search of a husband/wife, or trying to get pregnant, you might very well have called on the services of the local "wise woman". The source of everything from a love potion, to a cure for a cough, or poultice, the "cunning folk" were respected for their wisdom and benevolent magic. At a time when old folk-wisdom was often mistaken for magic, these people (usually women) were central to the daily lives of villagers across Europe.

In this wonderfully researched book we meet all manner of people, from poor villagers to rich Lords, to Royalty, all of whom place their faith in the Cunning Folk. Each chapter leads the reader across the centuries, reflecting on how natural it was to consult practitioners of "magic" and how much value was placed in their wisdom.

This is a well-researched and eminently readable book, by someone who clearly understands her subject, and with a nice way of linking past customs with modern day equivalents. Highly recommended.
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Whether a charlatan or a true practitioner, people want to believe. This book is full of
stories that were a normal part of everyday life five hundred years,ago. It's well researched and informative. A very different lifestyle.

This was a well researched book about cunning folk and service witches from a historical aspect as well as the modern day interaction. The stories told of people were amazing, often humorous and at times verging on unbelievable. I have to admit that at times it was a bit on the dryside but it is a research book and so that makes sense.

Well researched and well written book about cunning folk over the centuries. I'd always thought of cunning folk as having to skulk about in the shadows with their folk remedies and spells. But here the author's historical research shows that magic, in many forms, was prevalent and socially accepted for people at all levels of society. Many of the accounts come from church or court records so it is frustrating not to know what happened to most of these people, or to be able to delve deeper into the stories. But this is a fascinating insight into the lives and practices of cunning folk. Highly recommended.

This a thoroughly well researched book about the history of practical magic. The stories included are enlightening and engaging and really makes you think about our collective history. I found the book quite easy to read with good prose.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publishers for access to this book in return for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this exploration of magic and the cunning throughout history!

It is told in an accessible, interesting way and I felt there was a real element of storytelling!

I have read many magical historical books but this is up there!

I have read a few books about witchcraft but this one deals with service magic as it was practiced in the Middle Ages - by regular people who were usually part of their community and sold their services to their neighbours.

The book is organised in different chapters and starts with Mabel Gray, who in 1637 travels across several London boroughs to seek help to find her list silver spoons. Magic then was "the fallback option when things went wrong - or even when life wasn't going as well as one might like". Tabitha Stanmore explains how to people at the time, magic was "a rational part of the supernatural universe in which they lived" - if angels and demons are real, magic could be real too. She gives many case studies of people using service magic, even the Church, and how magic was seen as more neutral than it became seen as in the 17 and 18 centuries.

It's a fascinating book showing how people at the time would ask for the help of their local magician when they wanted revenge, or a baby, or to improve their marriage, or to progress socially. It's well researched and also sympathetic to the ideas of the time and how they were part of a way of thinking that was accepting of magic - as a neutral vessel - and it's practitioners.

Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

Whilst it is relatively easy to read English history stories (true and factual) concerning real people, for instance, the Tudors, this book is aimed more at the lower levels of society. There is magic, witchcraft, alchemy, potions with desperate men and women turning to Cunning Folk for all sorts of reasons, sometimes having lost some clothes!

I found the whole book fascinating, and obviously well researched by Ms Stanmore. She has delved into the 12th century, stories from Elizabeth 1 and even more up to date tales.

Whilst I really enjoyed the slightly older chapters, the whole book was excellent.

Thanks to Net Galley and Random House UK Vintage for the chance to read and review.

Fascinating, well researched and detailed book on both historical and modern stories about people relying on Cunning Folk.
The author has clearly done the leg work for this book and it shows, setting the scenes for many of the tales very well and you become immersed in it all very quickly.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read and review this book.

A veritable treasure trove of historical research, mostly related to magic. I didn't expect this level of detail and I am pleasantly surprised by it. The author even tells of an event that occurred in modern times, when a fortune teller who charged 3 pouns for short readings and 7 pounds for long ones had a queue stretching right around the block in London, around 140 people long. The author was one of the people who queued. Also I learned that the demand for psychics went up during the early days of the covid pandemic and the financial crisis of 2008.
However most of the book was historical and I learned that aristocrats as well as commoners were involved in magical practices, some of the names I already knew but I did not know of others suspected of magic.
An excellent guide to magical practices and other things associated with magic, such as alchemy, which laid the foundations for modern chemistry.
I would give this book more than 5 stars if I could for the sheer level of detail and research that went into it.