Joe
Pettet
Smith

A magician made an entire army disappear. Alongside a group of set designers, painters and zoologists based in Surrey, England, plans were made to make military apparatus vanish in the deserts of Egypt during the Second World War. Using optical illusions and experimental camouflage, they borrowed techniques from stagecraft and set design to misdirect and bend reality. Although the plans worked, more recent research suggests that the magician’s direct involvement was itself a fabrication. Part British propaganda, part exaggeration, part self-promotion regurgitated later as fact. Fantastical stories are appealing. Whether they end up to be true or not becomes less important, the suspension of disbelief is part of the experience.