A huge amount of research must have gone into this book. It apparently details briefly every notable example of magical belief and practice during the First World War. Really interesting stuff.

It’s not exactly the book I had wanted to read. I got interested in the subject because I noticed that under the pressure of the pandemic some people have started to perform little acts of attempted magic. I was looking for a book that would classify these behaviours by type and give me some sort of technical terminology. This is very much a book about the ‘what’ rather than the ‘why’. This is of course not the author’s fault. Neither is it the publisher’s. My copy is lacking the dust cover so I had to judge by the contents page. I think what I’m looking for is a book on the psychology of religion.

That said, I’m glad I read it. It really is just very interesting generally and the sections on battlefield luck and the little gods and amulets the soldiers carried is relevant to our current situation. ( )