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What fun to have made these men both so commonplace, the least likely characters one would imagine to be cut out for sorcery. Vinculus puts himself in the way of both magicians and prophecies that one: "Will see his dearest possession in his enemy's hands," and that the other "Will bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow and still feel its ache". The rise of these great magicians is predicted by Vinculus, a filthy street magician who Dickens would have been proud to have conjured up. The other magician is Mr Jonathan Strange (Bertie Carvel), a ne'er do well comic figure hopelessly in love with one Arabella who doesn't take Strange seriously till she sees him perform a spell in which Norrell appears. When news of Mr Norrell's powers spread throughout the land Childermass, a sinister side-kick if ever you saw one, persuades Mr Norrell to move to London so he can offer his skills to Sir Walter Pole in charge of the failing war effort.
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Goaded by the York society of magicians, Norrell practises magic in the York cathedral bringing to life chattering statues and gargoyles to the fear and amazement of the society. There are in fact two magicians – one, the reclusive Mr Norrell (Eddie Marsan from Ray Donovan) who learnt his dark arts through the reading of specialised books and lives in Yorkshire with his manservant Childermass. Set in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, for three centuries England's practical magicians have gone slack on their oars (or wands) to such an extent that even the York society of magicians believes there are none left in the land. Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Samantha Clarke? If you haven't, I say you should because although the televised version of the same name, dished up on Tuesday night at 8.30pm is very, very good, the brilliance of the writing can never be captured. Bertie Carvel plays Jonathan Strange in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a ne'er-do-well who is also one of two remaining sorcerers in early 19th-century England.