HOW TO KILL A WITCH : A Guide For The Patriarchy : a real historical investigationa & fierce warning

€19.90

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.

Scotland’s witch hunts were devastatingly common, with thousands of women accused, tortured and executed between the 1500s and 1700s. Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi trace how fear, misogyny and legal systems combined to create a process that moved from suspicion to “pricking,” forced confessions and brutal deaths — all under the guise of justice.

Drawing on expert testimony, trial records and portraits of the accused, the authors expose how patriarchal power fuelled the persecution and ask whether similar patterns of control and scapegoating could ever resurface. Their work pieces together a vivid, tragic history while challenging readers to confront its echoes in the present.

Product Information

Author: Claire Mitchell, Zoe Venditozzi
Language: Angļu valoda
Year of publication: 2025
Cover type: Soft cover
product.Svars: 0.372 kg
ISBN code: 9781800961890

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Product description

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?

WINNER 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards

Blackwell's Scottish Book of the Year

'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