This week, Mary C Flannery explores the spells and potions of medieval magic; and Jean Wilson on the trail of the ever elusive Anne Boleyn.

‘Love spells and lost treasure: Service magic in England from the later Middle Ages to the early modern era’, by Tabitha Stanmore 

‘Textual magic: Charm and written amulets in medieval England’, by Katherine Storm Hindley

‘Hunting the falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the marriage that shook Europe’, by John Guy and Julia Fox 

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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In the penultimate episode in our series on the great essays, David talks about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Case for Reparations’, published in the Atlantic in 2014. Black American life has been marked by injustice from the beginning: this essay explores what can – and what can’t – be done to remedy it, from slavery to the housing market, from Mississippi to Chicago. Plus, what has this story got to do with the origins of the state of Israel?

Read the original essay here.

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