Doc Shiels, local legend in the Falmouth area , died in summer 2024.
“Whether you believed in Shiels’ magic was neither here nor there. He remained, at heart, a Surrealist, his showmanship akin to that of Salvador Dalí, his necromantic beard a variant of Dalí’s waxed moustache.
This was not understood by his Cornish neighbour, the painter and occultist Ithell Colquhoun.
“I told her that I was a charlatan and she denied it,” Shiels cheerily recalled. “‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You have real powers’, and all that nonsense.
I said ‘no more than anyone else, my dear’.”
Would you like to try your own exploration of magical Cornwall?
