BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

The Magical Revival (1972) Kenneth Grant   The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages (2002) Brian Bates   Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (2009) Owen Davies   The Book Of English Magic (2009) Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate    There is no book quite like Kenneth Grant's Magical Revival . But what exactly is it? In some ways it is a conventional narrative of the 'new' Magical experiment that was introduced by the 'revelation' of Aiwass to Aleister Crowley in 1904. Grant takes us through to the Zos Kia Cultus of Austin Osman Spare who died in 1956. But this general narrative is overshadowed by the book's true purpose which is to do for Magic as a religious narrative what the Early Church Fathers did for Christianity - to express both its cogency and its mystery and so its high and serious purpose as a spiritual tradition, if not necessarily a religion in the formal sense. Nor can the corpus of work be wholly judged on this one wor

The History of Rome (2010-2012)   Mike Duncan    UC Classics Ancient World Podcasts (2012-2013) University of Cincinnatti Classics Department   The Fall of Rome Podcast (2016-2017) Patrick Wyman/Wondery    Anglo Saxon England Podcast (2015-2017) David Crowther   The Viking Age Podcast (2016-2019)  Lee Accomando These five podcasts will take you from the founding of Rome to the tail end of the early medieval world when North Eastern Europe started to see the formation of viable Kingdoms. Mike Duncan's History of Rome is as legendary as the subject matter of its first episode, extending over a further 178 episodes of straight narrative to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. It a no-nonsense old fashioned tale of what happened in the order in which it happened. Enjoyable for those who like a continuous good story with analysis placed second.    University of Cincinnati Classics Department produced a series of seven witty and enjoyable short podcasts to support their 2012 Exhibi