Sublime

The troubled drinker’s sleight of hand—dividing your confessions among close friends but never leaving any one person doused with too much truth.

Such a varied group would rarely be seen under one roof, but all had gathered with one purpose: to petition the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, then a bewigged and painted woman of sixty-six, to start up a company ‘to venter in the pretended voiage to ye

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite.

We all met at a restaurant—which had become my favorite place for these things because deals just go better on a full stomach.

Old habits die hard and even in the eleventh century the Church was still having to rail against ‘that most filthy habit’ of dressing up as stags.

The motto of The Magic Circle, established on a summer’s day in 1905 by twenty-three amateur and professional magicians, is Indocilis Privata Loqui – ‘not apt to reveal secrets’. It’s a neat description of the history of magic and its hold over the public and private imagination since society began.

Isobel hesitates, glancing around at the clientele, a mostly bohemian crowd sipping absinthe and arguing about art.