The decline of magic: Britain in the Enlightenment: by Michael Hunter, Yale, Yale University Press, 2020, xii, 243pp, £25.00, ISBN 9780300243581.

Hunter has brought together decades' worth of teaching and research experience to offer a detailed re-examination of the purported "disenchantment of the world" - the abandonment of belief in magic - during the early modern period in Britain. In the process of arguing against a dichotomy of Whig scepticism towards versus Tory belief in witchcraft, Hunter has replaced it with one between "orthodox" and "freethinker". Hunter avoids linear and monocausal explanations and offers an underlying argument that increased scepticism towards magic resulted from a series of disparate yet overlapping developments. [Extracted from the article]