Dated and actually quite a bit biased? - Rated 
Having just read Wicca Magickal Beginnings for the first time, I thought I would revisit Triumph of the Moon (and a few other works) to see what I think of it after all these years. I read Triumph of the Moon when it first came out you see and then I was relatively new to the world of paganism. My knowledge and understanding has grown quite a lot since then and I was surprised that I found many errors in the book which I never noticed the first time. Some of them have already been noted by other reviewers here so I won't go into detail.
All and all this is a great book, but it is a product of its time. I got the feeling that the author might have been a bit biased in places with the views he presented. It also in hindsight seemed really strange to me that he included large sections on authors such as Starhawk, who is clearly not connected to either British Paganism or to the Wicca of Gerald Gardner. So why include her? Just to be sarcastic and put her down? I am not a great fan of the work of American pagans in general, but it has to be said that Starhawk's material was hugely influential. By including her, the author is giving credit to her and promoting her approach which he clearly does not agree with in the first place. All the same, one has to concede that she did have an influence and therefore might be worthy of inclusion.
He other thing that struck me is that the author clearly set out to prove his point that Wicca is the only religion given by the UK to the rest of the world. How can this be true? What about Druidry? The Church of England? Aetherius? Celtic Christianity? Its a nice idea, but its not true and unfortunately now a great many people echo him in saying that it is the only religion given by the UK to the world! The power of the written word in the hands of those who follow, rather than think.
Read widely on the subject of your history, be it the history of your culture, religion or origins. Knowledge is power!
Brilliant. A book for open minds. - Rated 
Buy it. I've had this book for a couple of years and keep going back to it (rare for me with most the books on the craft I have.) Yeah Mr Hutton writes like the accademic he is and at times you'll feel like you're sat in a uni lecture but stick with it.
This book is nothing but information that the eager pagan mind can eat up. Blows the myths and all the 'fictional' history of the craft. My favourite part is the second section that deals with the history of modern witchcraft, at present, though that might change, I feel, with additional readings. I'm a cottage witch and keep feeling a urge to back and read the chapters on the cunning folk for the imformation I might have missed on the first few reads.
Don't buy it if you like the Llewllyn 'be a witch, power, power, power, learn spells rule the world.' DO BUY IT if you've out grown that kind of stuff and wan't to know where the 'real' modern wiccan movement originated from and the true pagan liniage of the craft.
A classic for the well read wiccan's library.
My tip: order some high-lighter pens as well for all those parts relevant to the craft you're interested in.
Those who aren't wiccan/pagan but interested, please read it. So much truth about England's folk lore you can't afford to miss it. This book shoots holes in many of the modern wiccan claims you'll love it as much as the objective wiccans who read it. You might also learn something from it about the bigotry, highlighted in the first part of the book, of those who were different or practiced the old folk methods as part of their heritage.
A blessing on Mr Hutton for telling the truth (all be long winded a times)
Fantastic! - Rated
Hutton's treatment of the history of modern Paganism not only clarified the facts about paganism as a whole, it also gave me a greater understanding of what draws me to paganism. He sweeps away some of the myths around modern Paganism while recognising it as a valid spirituality. I thoroughly recommend this book to any Pagan, or indeed to any non-Pagan.
Fab & Must Read - Rated
It took me a long time to read this book and then I had to go back and start all over again. There is simply no doubt that this book is a must read for anyone interested in and everyone practicing Wicca today. Get a copy, read it and keep it for reference. It provides not just an overview of the history of the people and places, but also useful information which may help you reconstruct rituals. (Although not intended in that way)
learned folly and wiccan delusion - Rated 
This book has, for the last 5 years, been the focus of a markedly curious phenomenon - wiccan neopagans of a Gardnerian/Alexandrian hue, desperate for some face-saving ruse to back up their confused and incoherent belief-systems have been falling over themselves in their endorsement of this book, which effectively pulls the rug from under their feet and reveals their 'Old Religion' to be a romantic fabrication of the modern era. Frantic with desire for the whiff of academic 'respectability' they have fallen at the feet of their doyen Ronald Hutton whose work, whilst apparently debunking their fondest fantasies, at last confers some measure of intellectual dignity to their activities as a subject of socio-historical enquiry. In fact nowadays such born-again 'academic neopagans' are generally to be found attacking 'Murrayism' and other such heinous heresies which apparently they find so objectionable, even whilst meeting in 'covens' to practise their 'Old Religion'. This book provides grist for the mills of such perplexed souls. That such a contradictory balancing act between rationalistic scepticism and pseudo-religious incredulity might smack to some of schizoidal conflict seems lost on them. But then maybe academic rationalism and wiccan neopaganism are at root founded upon on the same modernist basis of secular atheism anyway, the former overtly , the latter unconsciously.
But the case is more complex yet: Ronald Hutton is himself a Wiccan Neopagan and this book is a rather cunning stratagem in that it seems to please all parties: its rationalistic debunking of Wicca's pretensions to antiquity are a nod to the predominant ethos of academia and are fair enough in their own somewhat limited way though hardly anything new: But in reality as one reads this book it seems that behind the seeming rigour of the research another agenda lurks - to provide a comprehensive and strongly biased justification of the whole modern subculture of Gardnerian Wicca, Crowleyism, the Golden Dawn and suchlike forms of occultism of the last century and a half. Whilst appearing to provide historical research into modern Witchcraft it in fact advances an apologist agenda firmly focussed on maintaining the primacy of these paradigms in the contemporary neopagan scene. factually, although much of interest can be found, all is not quite as reliable as first appears and there are certainly many questionable statements and factual errors to be located throughout.
More seriously this book, whilst playing it's disingenuous game of pleasing all parties actually buttresses and upholds the pseudo-orthodoxies of the modern occult scene to a degree which is dubious and counter-productive to say the least. Whilst assuming that these bunches of kooks busy jumping over their bonfires and declaiming bad poetry are so very significant Hutton does not include those contemporary practitioners, few enough to be sure, whose approach to the Mysteries of Witchcraft has been primarily along the lines that its true meaning should be apprehended as a reality within the crucible of the medieval mythic imagination rather than this literal-minded crankish subworld of 'covens' presided over by self-appointed suburban 'magisters'. And there are certainly those within the Witchcraft milieu in the last 30 years who instead of relying on Gardnerian Wicca or Crowleyan materials for inspiration have instead drawn upon authentic pre-modern folk-mythology and medieval magical material for the substance of their practises. There are practitioners whose emphasis has been upon medieval Witchcraft as an imaginal and interior mystery rather than the clumsy congregational literalism of the 20th century cults which Hutton exhaustively details ad nauseam.
In the final count this book whilst seeming to provide a valuable historical resume of the subject actually does little but uphold and formalise with its deceptive intellectual authentication an established subculture of modern Gardnerian Wicca and Crowleyism which is in truth stifling, fantasy-ridden, reactionary and obstructive. The crossover with the academic scene in the UK in a field of socio-historical studies constitutes what the previous reviewer very accurately defined as the 'pagan academic mafia' in the UK. Their ascendancy has in fact been characterized by a pervasive retrograde stagnation in the occult subculture, the entrenchment of orthodoxies which would best have been allowed to crumble.
The works of Carlo Ginzburg on the mythos of the medieval Sabbat are far more enlightening than Hutton's disingenuous apologia for modern pseudo-religions. Sadly this fact will be lost on the average Wiccan. Go elsewhere for the real historical data on Witchcraft, better still go to pre-modern primary sources and actually think for oneself - Hutton's duplicitous vindication of the never-never land of modern neo-paganism will only lead one into an arid cul-de-sac of rationalistic self-delusion. The book ultimately fails to provide much illumination regarding the enduring mythos of the Witch in the Western imagination into the modern era but instead provides a laboured apologia for the 'old guard' celebrities of the 'fan club' culture of 20th century occultism and their camp-followers in our day.
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