Finally, the overall tone is measured, balanced, fair and thoughtful. There are even periodic health warnings against misunderstanding or misusing magical techniques or expecting too much or the wrong thing. I mean at this point most of my goodreads friend could have entirely forgotten who I am and I wouldn't blame them, or you if it relates to you as you read this right now. I was pleased to see that the unknown and uncelebrated, those who have been working out of the public eye are honoured, as well as the more famous faces. As Alan Richardson points out, “The real magicians I know ….have full-time jobs in the normal world, where their workmates know nothing about their “other” lives.”

Neil Gaimon Interview, Stardust". MoviesOnline. 2007. Archived from the original on March 27, 2008 . Retrieved April 28, 2008. This section's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. ( March 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Whatever your beliefs about magic, this book is designed to introduce you to some of the most interesting contemporary practitioners of magic, and to many of the most important figures in the magical world of previous centuries. And to help you begin experiencing for yourself the world of magic and enchantment that has succeeded in intriguing generations of seekers, this comprehensive survey of English magic includes a rich menu of magical things to do and places to visit. I’m sure the similarity between the books is deliberate, with this being published at the same time as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reached English cinemas, boosting interest in anything schoolboy-wizard related.

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This causes Currie to go onto a war footing: he kills Tim's father whilst he recovers in hospital [31] to give Tim the emotional trauma he needs to subconsciously create another alternate world, and then manipulates the outburst of magic so that instead of a new world, Currie's version of Tim is recreated. The teacher then drains Tim's magic and hides it in a prearranged place: the true Tim leaves the world to learn how to control his magic and defeat his Other, [32] whilst Currie and his alternate Tim remain to die in battle with the hope of convincing the Other that he has killed the true Tim. [33] When the Other was convinced that he was triumphant, he used his power to open all the gateways between the worlds [34] — allowing Tim to escape to the Inn Between the Worlds using his mother's glamor stone to disguise himself as a girl called Mary [35] but also freeing the Wild Hunt, the god-killing band trapped for two-thousand years by a compact of rulers from Heaven, Faerie, Hell and other realms. [36] Sir Timothy Hunter, Tim's destiny, from the cover of issue #74. Tim continues his travels across America, until he somehow ends up trapped on an island on the outskirts of Faerie. He manages to escape the island with the help of Huon the Small, the first King of Faerie. Huon and Tim travel into the heart of Faerie. [23] The depiction of Tim Hunter's life continued in a five-issue mini-series called The Names of Magic, in which Tim learnt his true name (Timothy Hunter; Tamar, son of Tamlin; the Opener; the Merlin; Magic) and was accepted into the school of magic, known simply as White School, which exists across the Multiverse of Worlds in DC. If I were being fair, I'd say that a book that tries to cover everything from crop-circles to freemasonry, and from Merlin to Aleister Crowley is necessarily going to be broad and shallow. If I were being fair, I'd say that the sheer breadth of material sampled means that no-one is going to believe in all of it, not even the authors, and that there will always be interesting side-routes left unexplored. If I were being fair, I'd say it takes a deft hand to make reality as interesting as fiction (and vice-versa).

There is] a big, vital narrative in this book. The Introduction states that ‘…of all the countries in the world, England has the richest and most varied history of magical lore’, and it makes this point well, giving a glimpse into the enchanted undergrowth of England’s culture, countryside and ancient cities.

The faerie market in Gaiman's novel Stardust has many similarities to the one presented in the original miniseries. This may not be surprising as it's simply a case of Gaiman borrowing a portion of one work to use in the other.

This is a good thing; everyone but the English are proud of their cultural roots – as if English was the language of the observer, the special case of a non-magical tradition, viewing with a detached eye the weirdness of other cultures, when in fact we have the richest magical culture in the world. Tim learns that he is an "Opener" and has unconsciously been making his fantasies real all his life—whether they be simple imaginary friends or entire worlds—Tim introduces Molly to some more of his imaginary friends made real, Tanger and Crimple, who live in a tree on some wasteland near Tim's house. The wasteland opens out into an entire magical world created unconsciously by Tim's childhood fantasies, but as Molly is exploring it with Crimple she ends up being kidnapped and taken to Hell. [18] The tone is playful and serious, respectful and amused…This is not just a book about magic though, but a book of magic, and some of the most appealing sections are the ones that urge you to have a go yourself…This will remain the standard work for years to come. There’s the additional attraction that all this is bound to infuriate poor Professor Dawkins.’ Suzi Feay, The Sunday Telegraph The remarkable relationship between England’s green and pleasant land and some of the most influential magical traditions of the modern world forms the territory that Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate have set out to explore in detail in The Book of English Magic. The result is well worth reading, and for several reasons. It wasn’t a passion for Englishness that attracted me to the Golden Dawn tradition of magic, the first system I seriously studied, or later on drew me to the modern Druid movement; it was that the first was among the most comprehensive, detailed, and functional systems of magical practice in the world, and the second combined effective and satisfying magical and spiritual teachings with a reverence for living Nature that I had come to feel was essential to any valid response to the troubles of our time. Still, it so happens that both these traditions, and many others, did in fact first come into being on English soil.My only real criticism of The Book of English Magic it is that it sometimes claims for England important figures and movements that weren’t entirely English. This includes author CS Lewis, as was earlier pointed out by a reader of my blog. CS Lewis certainly lived in England, and the book does state that he was born in Ireland, but I could understand the Irish feeling that he shouldn’t have been in a book dedicated to English magic at all. Books of Magic Movie". HolyCow.com. November 19, 1998. Archived from the original on May 11, 2008 . Retrieved June 3, 2008.