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London Review of Books

The dead are all around us subscriber-only content

Hilary Mantel

  • Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches by Malcolm Gaskill

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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Hilary Mantel whose books include A Place of Greater Safety, Giving up the Ghost and Beyond Black, is working on a new novel called Wolf Hall.