For over 500 years witches, male and female, practised magic for both harm and good in their communities.

Most witches worked locally, used by their neighbours to cure illness, create love, or gratify personal spite against another. Margaret Lindsay from Northumberland was prosecuted for making men impotent, John Stokes in London for curing fevers, Collas de la Rue on Guernsey for killing people by witchcraft, and Isobel Gowdie in Auldearn for a variety of offences including consorting with Satan and fairies.

In the fifteenth century witches attacked a succession of English monarchs using enchanted images, and in the sixteenth they also sought ways to kill James VI of Scotland. In response a series of Acts of Parliament were passed which made much magic criminal and punished offenders severely, until a final Act in 1735 repealed them.

This impressive history shines a new light on witches, their magic, and the attempts to eradicate them throughout the British Isles, altering our picture of who witches were and why people employed them but also tried to suppress them.

• A landmark history of

  witchcraft and witches in the British Isles; the most comprehensive study

  ever published

• Concentrates on the personal

  stories and trials of individual witches

• Author is a respected expert

  on the occult

• Praise for the author's

  'Witchcraft: A History': 'Combines scholarly rigour with literary flair’

  INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

• ‘A fascinating portrait of

  the cunning folk … What makes this study so compelling is the rich

  tapestry of human stories that Maxwell-Stuart weaves throughout.’ BBC

  HISTORY MAGAZINE