My Review (5 stars out of 5)
(Audiobook)
In Scotland in the 1500s, witch hunts ripped through the country for over 150 years. More than 4,000 women were accused, many of whom were executed by strangulation and burning. Campaigners and writers Claire Mitchell, KC, and Zoe Venditozzi, explore what happened and why, revealing the process from identification of individuals to their accusation, ‘pricking’, torture, confessions, execution and beyond.
Subtitled ‘A Guide for the Patriarchy’, this is a fascinating book that delves into the epidemic of witch-hunting that spread across Scotland during the 16th century and led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent women. The writers highlight the influence of James the VI of Scotland (James the I of England), with excerpts from his book Daemonologie and how it influenced people like Matthew Hopkins (the Witchfinder General) to accuse women of witchcraft for reasons that were just plain silly. The book also focuses on how more famous witch trials, such as those in Salem, Massachusetts, dealt in relatively smaller numbers compared to those in Scotland.
The authors take the story of accused women up to more recent times, showing how such blinkered views persist and will continue as long as there are people in the world who promote hatred of women (you know who I’m talking about).
Read by the authors, this is a fascinating and thought-provoking book.
