Charles Dickens was an amateur conjurer for around seven years of his life, from the time he wrote A Christmas Carol to David Copperfield.  His best known performance was on the Isle of Wight in 1849; he wrote a highly amusing, and informative playbill to promote this show.  This playbill, where Dickens called himself the ‘Unparalleled Necromancer’, provides the focus to talk about how Dickens was inspired to take up magic, which other conjurers influenced him, whether he was any good as a conjurer and how he depicted, and wrote about, magic in his own books, articles and letters.  The talk includes a description of some of Dickens’ tricks from his own repertoire, plus some performances by Ian.  Any questions are allowed – apart from ‘how do you do it!?’