A book of Magic Greats! Magic by Alex Elmsley, Jack Avis, Roy Walton, Bobby Bernard, Ted Danson, and John Derris. This book includes all the effects that were first described in the small 1953 publication called Come A Little Closer plus 19 never-before published items. Material includes True Grit The Siva Fold, Jet Transportation, Monte Cristo Ring, Hockley's Coin Vanish, Oyster Shells, Cut & Restored Cigarette, Knifed and many more. This book also includes an excellent essay on Conjuring. The book is sprinkled with many historical photos.

Reviewed by Talk Magic:

Described as:
A book of Magic Greats! Magic by Alex Elmsley, Jack Avis, Roy Walton, Bobby Bernard, Ted Danson, and John Derris. This book includes all the effects that were first described in the small 1953 publication called Come A Little Closer plus 19 never-before published items. Material includes True Grit The Siva Fold, Jet Transportation, Monte Cristo Ring, Hockley's Coin Vanish, Oyster Shells, Cut & Restored Cigarette, Knifed and many more. This book also includes an excellent essay on Conjuring. The book is sprinkled with many historical photos. Written by John Derris, hardbound with a beautiful dust jacket. 104 pages.

Review:
The comments above are a fair assessment of this book but it's a whole lot more that that. In many ways it's the story of six young London magicians sitting in coffee houses in the 1950's passionately arguing about and developing close up Magic. It's difficult for many of us to really bring to mind the way things were almost 50 years ago but as these guys had to make all their own routines, develop their own tricks and props etc, you'll gain a brief idea of how much modern magic owes to their ingenuity. There are historical details, photos of the guys in the 1950's and in 1997 when this version was published but at the heart of it are the ideas and routines which the young magicians published in 1953 and which are reproduced in this later work along with some newer ideas.

There are ten sessions, each by a different contributor and the first nine include tricks and sleights with cards, coins, hankies, sponge balls, wallets, cigarettes, curtain rings and finger rings, diaries, and pocket knives. Session ten is an essay entitled What's wrong with magic' which makes exactly the same points about lazy magicians, sloppy performance, exposure, reluctance to actually work at an effect, get rich quick merchants, over simplification of effects etc as we make here on TM. The difference is that the article in session ten was written in 1923 - so there's not much new under the sun!

The contributors are: Jack Avis, Bobby Bernard, Ted Danson, John Derris, Alex Elmsley, Arthur Holland, Hugh Scott, Tommy Vanderschmidt, Roy Walton and Oswald Williams. Other names involved at some point in the story include Morely Budden, previous owner of Kaymar Magic, who produced the original book in 1953, Peter Warlock who wrote the original foreword which has been faithfully reproduced in his memory, and Al Koran who was also a member of the original group.

Value for Money:
There are 27 ideas/tricks/routines so even at the highest price above, that's about £1 each, all photos are in black and white and the individual routines have photo illustrations to help teach the moves and so on. In case anyone wonders, no they don't include the Elmsley Count! Add in the history and feeling of how these pioneers loved their magic and it's a gem of a book which I'm glad I bought.




Written by John Derris, hardbound with a beautiful dust jacket. 104 pages.

Come a Little Closer by John Denis