THIS thorough and enthralling look at superstition, reason and religion between 1250 and 1750 is a fairly long read at 486 pages, but it is never verbOse or boring.
Whatever your bag, whether it be "true religion", ethnic heritage, folklore, magic of all kinds, faith healing, fairies or demons, Cameron delves into it and comes up with the goodies - he has his own spell to catch and it soon has you in its power.
What strikes you from reading this book, however, is the abiding interest in superstition in the European psyche. Despite the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, we have an abiding need to believe in the supernatural.
How else to explain the popularity of Tolkien and JK Rowling.
They are satisfying an atavistic need which science and modern life ignores, and you don’t need to be the seventh son of a seventh son to realise it is not going away.
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