Cunning Folk

Cunning Folk transports us to a time when magic was used to solve life’s day-to-day problems – as well as some of deadly importance.‘A brilliant book, written with wit and vigour’ MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin of All Witches‘Absolutely fascinating’ IAN MORTIMER, author of The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval EnglandIt’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might well have been cunning folk: practitioners of magic who were a common, even essential part of daily life, at a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane.Charming, thought-provoking and based on original research, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world by an expert historian, as well as a commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.‘I adore Cunning Folk. A truly fascinating and human book’ Ruth Goodman, author of How To Be a Tudor‘Packed with vivid historical anecdotes, this is an intriguing insight into the magical lives of past people and the history of our own superstitions today’ Marion Gibson, author of Witchcraft‘Fascinating . . . opens a window into another world’ Tracy Borman, author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I‘Full of such magical tips and colourful vignettes . . . crackles with incident’ Kate Maltby, Financial Times‘Spirited and richly detailed’ New York Times

Tabitha Stanmore is a social historian of magic and witchcraft at the University of Exeter. She is part of the Leverhulme-funded Seven County Witch-Hunt Project, and her doctoral thesis was published as Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period. She has featured on Radio 3’s Free Thinking and BBC 4’s Plague Fiction, and her writing has been published in the Conversation.