You haven’t heard of Count Cagliostro? Well, chances are if HarperCollins has anything to do with it, you will. Iain McCalman’s book comes with enthusiastic endorsements from Simon Winchester, Peter Conrad and Peter Gay. And it must be said that there is a sense in which the Count – ‘the greatest enchanter of the eighteenth century’, as McCalman salutes him – is alive and well: a Google search on the Internet brings up more than 4000 results. Indeed, the starting point for McCalman’s skilfully entertaining account of Cagliostro’s career as magician, alchemist, healer and Freemason is the puzzle of this after-life, or what he calls Cagliostro’s ‘ascension into culture’. The irony is that this book is likely to ensure that the enchanter casts his spell on a new audience. For it is an extraordinary tale.