How to Kill a Witch A Guide for the Patriarchy
How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy by Claire Mitchell is published by Octopus Publishing Group and will be available on May 15, 2025. This 304-page book explores the historical context of witch hunts in Scotland during the 1500s, where thousands of women faced accusations and brutal executions. The authors, Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, investigate the factors that led to these trials, examining the societal and legal mechanisms that allowed such persecution to flourish.
Readers will find a detailed analysis of the witch trials, including the processes of identification, accusation, and execution. The book incorporates expert testimonies, trial transcripts, and personal accounts of the accused women, creating a comprehensive narrative that sheds light on the motivations behind these events. By delving into the dynamics of power and gender, How to Kill a Witch raises critical questions about the historical and ongoing implications of patriarchal oppression, making it a significant contribution to discussions on feminism, history, and social justice.
Official synopsis Publisher
**** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ****
‘Fascinating and illuminating, this book tempers the justifiable rage with sharp and funny pinpricks to the pompous.’ VAL MCDERMID, author of Past Lying
‘As well as highly entertaining read, How To Kill A Witch is a tour de force of research, understanding and compassion.’ PROFESSOR SUE BLACK, author of All That Remains.
‘Serious and angry, but so completely accessible, How To Kill A Witch is a work of real historical investigation and a fierce warning for our times.’ MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin Of All Witches
‘At a time when women’s rights are once again being threatened across the globe, this book could not be a more timely read if it tried.’ SHIRLEY MANSON, Garbage
‘Two of Scotland’s most vivid storytellers.’ THE TIMES
‘Fascinating, angering’ THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
As a woman, if you lived in Scotland in the 1500s, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch. Witch hunts ripped through the country for over 150 years, with at least 4,000 accused, and with many women’s fates sealed by a grizzly execution of strangulation, followed by burning.
Inspired to correct this historic injustice, campaigners and writers Claire Mitchell, KC, and Zoe Venditozzi, have delved deeply into just why the trials exploded in Scotland to such a degree. In order to understand why it happened, they have broken down the entire horrifying process, step-by-step, from identification of individuals, to their accusation, ‘pricking’, torture, confessions, execution and beyond.
With characteristically sharp wit and a sense of outrage, they attempt to inhabit the minds of the persecutors, often men, revealing the inner workings of exactly why the Patriarchy went to such extraordinary lengths to silence women, and how this legally sanctioned victimisation proliferated in Scotland and around the world.
With testimony from a small army of experts, pen portraits of the women accused, trial transcripts, witness accounts and the documents that set the legal grounds for the hunts, How to Kill A Witch builds to form a rich patchwork of tragic stories, helping us comprehend the underlying reasons for this terrible injustice, and raises the serious question – could it ever happen again?
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