A magnetic bearing has two bearing members each of which carries a set of bearing elements. The bearing elements carried by one member are interleaved with the bearing elements carried by the other member to define three or more substantially parallel interleaf gaps between successive elements, so that bearing forces can be developed as a result of magnetic shear stresses acting across those gaps. The magnetic bearing achieves its bearing forces as the sum of force contributions from a number of parallel (or nearly-parallel) airgaps and each of these individual airgap force contributions comes about as the integration of magnetic shear stress over the airgap area brought about by causing lines of magnetic flux to cross the airgap at an angle to the normal.