The dead are all around us

Hilary Mantel

  • Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches by Malcolm Gaskill
    Fourth Estate, 402 pp, £15.99, April 2001, ISBN 1 84115 109 2

April 1944. Winston Churchill sent a memo to Herbert Morrison at the Home Office:

Let me have a report on why the Witchcraft Act, 1735, was used in a modern Court of Justice. What was the cost of this trial to the State, observing that witnesses were brought from Portsmouth and maintained here in this crowded London, for a fortnight, and the Recorder kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of necessary work in the Courts?

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Vol. 23 No. 9 · 10 May 2001 » Hilary Mantel » The dead are all around us (print version)
Pages 3-7 | 5976 words