HOW TO KILL A WITCH
- Author Claire Mitchell ; Zoe Venditozzi
- Narrator Claire Mitchell, Zoe Venditozzi
- Publisher Octopus
- Publish Date 15 May 2025
- Run Time 8 hours and 17 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Feminism and feminist theory, History, Witchcraft.
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What to expect
**** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ****
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
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
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?
Critics Review
'Fascinating and illuminating, this book tempers the justifiable rage with sharp and funny pinpricks to the pompous.'
'As well as highly entertaining read, How To Kill A Witch is a tour de force of research, understanding and compassion. What the world needs is more quarrelsome dames - and Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi are two of the best.'
'A dignified, defiant memorial to thousands of ordinary women branded as witches and, all too often, put to death. Told with imagination and empathy, the stories in this book expose the tragedy of their lives, as well as the subordination, paranoia and cruelty responsible. 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.'
'As a woman who has been called a witch from as early as age ten, you could say I've been waiting my whole life for this book. How did they get away with the wholesale slaughter of women simply for being opinionated, intuitive, creative or intelligent? 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.'
'Quite possibly the most horrific portrayal of one of our darkest periods in history. This book, whilst an addictive read, also warns us of the dangers of powerful men (mostly) who used scapegoating and mass hysteria to target and murder women (mostly). The writers hand us a nightmarish blueprint of what could easily happen today, if we chose to ignore our past.'
'The Witches of Scotland... profile persecuted women from the burning times. Their tales are woven by archivists, historians and writers - and by Venditozzi and Mitchell themselves, two of Scotland's most vivid storytellers.'
'A unique, angry, surprisingly funny tour of what Scottish witch trial history means today'
'Utterly absorbing and drags you in immediately.'
'The most important book I'll read this year. A manifesto, a call to arms, a historical heist and a paragon of storytelling, How to Kill a Witch prods some of the most topical issues of the moment and provides a wealth of insights, stitching the past and present together like some gorgeous tartan. Zoe and Claire are a dynamic duo of quarrelsome dames, and their take on witches is the very best. Brilliant, witty, searing, and necessary, this is a book to share and treasure.'
'Terrifying, fascinating and important'
'This book pulls off the difficult feat of being simultaneously entertaining, unsettling and enraging. A brilliant account of what happened during Scotland's witch 'panics', and why it still matters today.'
'The authors' campaigning and creative approach to exploring the stories of women caught in the maelstrom of witchcraft accusations and patriarchal suspicion makes for an engaging read about a tragic subject.'
'In this fascinating, angering and deeply sad book Claire Mitchell KC and Zoe Venditozzi set out to tell the story of the thousands of poor and uneducated women who were victims of a satanic panic in Scotland during the 16th and 17th centuries. Every village in Scotland has a memorial to the men who were killed in two world wars. Why not something similar to the thousands of women who lost their lives due to this gross miscarriage of justice?'
'Fascinating, fact-filled, funny, feminist and furious'
'The writers navigate the story of this horrific time in a way that is eloquent and full of wit but never exploitative or irreverent. Using the stories of real people accused of witchcraft, Mitchell and Venditozzi give these women a voice and explore the real reasons for these terrible injustices.'
User Reviews
17/05/2025
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