Zoe Venditozzi & Claire Mitchell – How to Kill a Witch

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 Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell KC have delved deeply into just why the trials exploded in Scotland to such a degree.

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?

Claire Mitchell KC is a Scottish advocate specialising in Public Inquiries and Fatal Accident Inquiries. She has been involved in significant cases before the Privy Council and Supreme Court, shaping key aspects of Scottish law.

Zoe Venditozzi is a writer and educator. Raised in North-East Fife, she studied at the University of Glasgow. Her debut novel, Anywhere’s Better Than Here, was shortlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize.