The Sorcerer's Tale

• The strange and previously unknown story of Gregory Wisdom - physician, magician, and consummate con-man
• Takes us on a whirlwind journey through Tudor London, from the cut-throat world of early modern medicine to the ganglands of fraud and organized crime; from Kabbalistic conjurors to street-corner wizards
• Lays bare the intimate connections between Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld
• Highlights the important hidden links between the disparate worlds of medicine, magic, organized crime and religion in sixteenth-century England

Readership: All those interested in the history of crime and the underworld in Shakespeare's London and in the history of magic and medicine.

Alec Ryrie, Reader in Church History, University of Durham

"This book is aimed at the general reader, but its conclusion will make academics take notice." - J. P. D. Cooper, TLS

"Fascinating insight into a lost and lurid world." - Daily Telegraph

"The author lets his story unfold with considerable flair." - Owen Davies, BBC History Magazine

"A Tudor story that glitters with wit and erudition. Ryrie has produced a veritable nugget of gold." - Leanda de Lisle, History Today

"'a Tudor story that glitters with wit and erudition. Ryrie has produced a veritable nugget of gold.'"

"" - History Today

"He excavates many nuggets of fascinating information." - Literary Review

"The book illuminates various shady pathways of Tudor political and social history, and the author lets his story unfold with considerable flair." - BBC Music Magazine.

"He excavates many nuggets of fascinating information." - Literary Review

"It would be hard not to love this book. It relates a fascinating, neglected story; it is wonderfully well written." - Jonathan Wright, The Tablet

Chronology
Foreword
1: The Nobleman
2: The Physician
3: The Underworld
4: The Magician
5: The Preacher
6: Conclusion: Barbarians at the Gates
Appendix: Gregory Wisdom's Will