Rachel Morris’ new book,
‘The Years of the Wizard’
All things were believable back then – wizards, alchemy, fairies, elixirs and angels
Published by Duckworth Books, October 9th 2025.
‘The Years of the Wizard’ is a highly atmospheric exploration of the lives of the Tudor and Renaissance magicians, men like John Dee and Giordano Bruno, who were also scientists, astrologers, mathematicians and alchemists.
It is also an act of historical imagination, bringing to life the stories of the magicians’ wives, mothers, lovers, daughters and servants, the women who supported and assisted the work of these travelling magicians as they promised answers and gold for the rulers of England and Europe.
About Rachel
‘I always planned to be a writer,’ says Rachel, ‘it’s what I wanted from the time that I was little, it’s just that it’s taken me a while to get there. I had two novels published in my forties, including ‘Ella and the Mothers’ which was turned into a television series for the BBC. After that came a long period during which I was the director of a museum-making company called Metaphor, and thus part of the creation, design and delivery of some of the most exciting museum-renovations of the last few decades, from the new Cast Courts at the V and A and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to the Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum and the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It was a fascinating time in my life but I still came back to writing, as I always knew I would, with first ‘The Museum Makers’ (2020), a blend of memoir and cultural history and now, most recently, ‘The Years of the Wizard’ – an account of the strange, true history of Renaissance magic.’
Join me on substack
Story Talk is about writing books and getting published, and aims to capture three-years-worth of thoughts and ideas that bubbled to the surface of my mind whilst I was writing my book.
