The Last Witches of England

Callow's intriguing book is both a case study of the Bideford witch trail and an examination of how superstition prevailed in a time of increasing rationality... Callow's fascinating and vivid unpicking of the English Salem is also an account of the birth pangs of the modern age. -- Michael Prodger * New Statesman * Callow examines in detail the surviving evidence of the Bideford case, while also imaginatively reconstructing event to create a convincing picture of how superstition and belief in sorcery lay just beneath the surface of a mercantile society struggling to be born. -- Nigel Jones * The Spectator * One 17th-century pamphlet about the Bideford trial promised many Wonderful Things, worth your Reading ; a line that could justifiably be slapped across the cover of [The Last Witches of England]. -- Tristram Saunders * The Telegraph Culture * A retelling of a 17th-century witchcraft trial that never loses sight of the women at its heart, nor the social and economic factors that contributed to their plight... There is no plain explanation for the witchcraft accusations of 1682, but then acts of evil never have a simple origin. The Last Witches of England faces that fact and marshals an intriguing story around new research on the case. -- Marion Gibson * BBC History Magazine * Carrow meticulously explores the haunting tale of the Bideford witches. -- Suzannah Lipscomb * UnHerd * An elegantly presented, well illustrated and readable book on how class conflict played out through witch hunting... A timely warning against persecution and intolerance. * The Morning Star * In The Last Witches of England John Callow painstakingly reconstructs the lines of three beggar women accused of witchcraft in Bideford, Devon in 1632 by trawling administrate records, parish registers and dole lists. It is a remarkable piece of scholarship...astute and thoughtful. * History Today * Vividly told, detailed and extremely moving. * BBC History Revealed * [Callow] brings to the Bideford episode a nuanced sense of how witches' supposed powers were understood and experienced at different levels of early modern society. * Inside Higher Ed * The Bideford witches' story is an essential piece in England's witchcraft history. Callow has researched it properly and deeply for the first time, and his astonishing discoveries shed new light on this tragic and bizarre story. He draws the reader into the story, retelling it with vibrant characterisation. We come away with a thoughtful understanding of what it meant to be deemed a witch, tried as a witch, and to die as a witch. * Dr. Christina Oakley Harrington, Founder & Director, Treadwell's, UK * I read the book with considerable interest and enjoyment - others have written on the Bideford witches, but not in this sort of depth. John Callow has been remarkably successful in reconstructing the story of the three 'Bideford Witches' executed in 1682. He maintains an imaginative and accessible narrative grounded in the relevant documentation and the relevant historical context, which will immerse the modern reader in the tragedies and complexities of the early modern witch hunts. * James Sharpe, Professor Emeritus of Early Modern History, University of York, UK * This is a stirring and multilayered book. At its heart is a very sad story, but one that needs to be heard. The cautionary tale Callow spins here is not the war between superstition and reason, but in the ways in which we have historically vilified and marginalized those in poverty, especially women, and the lengths we go to in silencing their voices. * Dr Amy Hale, Anthropologist and Folklorist, writer of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, USA * With 17th Century culture wars, conspiracy theories and non-science, it wasn't just the people who spread deadly superstition. Political, religious, media, scientific and even legal establishments literally demonised vulnerable women. John Callow's meticulous and gripping history of the Bideford Witches is unputdownable. * Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, Politician, Barrister and Human Rights Activist, UK *