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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
David Barnett

007 meets the occult: why spies and sorcerers are a perfect fit in fiction

Jane Seymour as mystic Solitaire, left, and Roger Moore as James Bond in 1973 film Live and Let Die.
Jane Seymour as mystic Solitaire, left, and Roger Moore as James Bond in 1973 film Live and Let Die. Photograph: United Artists/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Spycraft and magic have always been strange but agreeable bedfellows, and a recent trend for merging both branches of the dark arts is gathering momentum in fiction.

The cold war era of the late 1940s through to the 1980s seems an especially appropriate stage for stories that pepper espionage with something even more shadowy – be that occult magic, the stagecraft of illusionists or investigation into psychic powers.

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