Just like magic

Professional magician Max Somerset is doing what he loves, but his journey hasn’t been conventional. Sorted magazine caught up with him to hear his journey of adoption, loss and faith.

What was your childhood like?

I grew up in the village of Bampton in Devon with my adopted parents, Mervyn Priddle, who was a milkman, and Shirley, who looked after the house of Edward and Molly Somerset, my biological grandparents. I had been brought to the West Country from Italy by my biological father, Ed Somerset junior, who found it difficult to deal with my Italian mother’s mental health issues and so they parted ways when I was two years old. Father left mother in Italy and took me to be with his ageing parents while he and two others set up a tiling design company in London called Fired Earth. Shirley had undergone a hysterectomy and therefore could have no children.

A twist of fate occurred a year later when my biological father contracted a brain tumour and it was mutually agreed that...