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The Queen鈥檚 Conjuror by Benjamin Woolley, HarperCollins, 拢15.99, ISBN
0002571390

WHY is there such unflagging popular interest in Elizabethan England? Perhaps
because, for all the alienness of their world, the Elizabethans seem to have so
much in common with ourselves. Benjamin Woolley鈥檚 biography of Queen Elizabeth鈥檚
personal philosopher, Dr John Dee, handsomely captures a society torn between
rationality and romance, cynicism and hero worship.

For the rational enquirer, honest curiosity is never enough: you also have to
know which tiny fragments of your experience will respond to rational study. And
woe betide you if you pick your subject poorly. Dee was already established as
one of Europe鈥檚 most gifted mathematicians when he applied his extraordinary
intellect to the subject of angels鈥攁nd so laid himself open to the ravings
of the wildest madmen and charlatans of his age.

When it comes to Dee鈥檚 failure to distinguish science from spiritualism,
Woolley strips away the comforts of hindsight. In Dee鈥檚 time, studies of the
mind and body were not yet fully separable from studies of the material world,
and the single word 鈥渋ntelligencer鈥� might cover a career that straddled
everything from philosophy to engineering to espionage. The scientific spirit
was abroad, but it had yet to find its lodging.

After reading Woolley鈥檚 sympathetic study, The Queen鈥檚 Conjuror, it
is hard to feel complacent about Dee鈥檚 errors. Dee was hunting for an underlying
divine language to things; many of us, for all our modern advantages, find the
idea irresistible. From cyberculture to genome theory, there鈥檚 many a
contemporary pundit chasing Dee鈥檚 butterfly . . .