{"title":"Malcolm Gaskill","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"ruin-of-all-witches-book-malcolm-gaskill-9780141991481","title":"The Ruin of All Witches","description":"*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE* *A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR*  'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times  'Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC History  In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons the irascible brickmaker and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall.  The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death.  Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world.  'Gaskill tells this deeply tragic story with immense empathy and compassion, as well as historical depth' The Guardian   'As compelling as a campfire story ... 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From childhood most of us develop a sense of the mysterious, malign person, usually an old woman. Historically, too, we recognize witch-hunting as a feature of pre-modern societies. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween to superstitions, and literary references such as Faust and even Harry Potter, witches still feature heavily in our society. In this Very Short Introduction Malcolm Gaskill challenges all of this, and argues that what we think we know is, in fact, wrong.   Taking a historical perspective from the ancient world to contemporary paganism, Gaskill reveals how witchcraft has meant different things to different people and that in every age it has raised questions about the distinction between fantasy and reality, faith and proof.   Telling stories, delving into court records, and challenging myths, Gaskill examines the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and explores the reinvention of witchcraft - as history, religion, fiction, and metaphor.  ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. 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The accused was Helen Duncan, a plump Scotswoman, convicted as a fraud yet believed by hundreds to possess the power to speak to the dead. This is her extraordinary story, and of religion and superstition in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Helen Duncan was born in Callander in 1898 and developed mysterious powers during the World War I when she correctly predicted the guise of the soldier she would marry. Having refined these powers she became increasingly celebrated following her own near death from pneumonia when she was informed of her vocation by a shadowy white figure. She went on to produce spirit forms from ectoplasm that, she said, flowed through her. She was accompanied by a spirit guide named Albert and a young girl spirit named Peggy. Or was she? The Psychic community was divided in two fiercely opposing camps - followers and sceptics. 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Her life is an amazing glimpse into the spritiual and psychological mood of the times, a story of bathos and absurdity, of credulity and cruelty, and of England's last witch.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49521205117201,"sku":"GOR001535125","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50226743050513,"sku":"CIN1841151092G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50280348877073,"sku":"GOR013910978","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52325941870865,"sku":"GOR001262920","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52958585749777,"sku":"GOR001874116","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1841151092.jpg?v=1751442456"},{"product_id":"witchfinders-book-malcolm-gaskill-9780719561214","title":"Witchfinders","description":"'The most chilling witch-hunt in English history . . . fascinating' Independent on Sunday  'A terrible tale marvellously told . . . 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By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 East Anglian innocents -- most of them women -- had been captured, interrogated and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were convicted, condemned and hanged. Their alleged crimes ranged from destroying property and inflicting fatal illnesses, to feeding animal familiars with blood and having sexual intercourse with the devil. Accompanied by John Stearne, a godly neighbour from his parish, the twenty-two-year-old Hopkins toured the eastern counties on horseback, meticulously extracting evidence of satanic pacts and dispatching suspects for trial. Hopkins fashioned himself into the 'Witch Finder General' although the torture techniques used had no justification in religion or law, nor was his campaign officially sanctioned. The witch-hunt was an extraordinary event, and would long be remembered as the poisonous fruit of religious extremism, grown wild in a political vacuum, never to be repeated.Witchfinders tells the true and terrible story of Matthew Hopkins and his horrifying crusade as witch-hunting fever gripped the country. 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Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead.  What happens when we die? It was the question of the age for a generation which had endured one world war and now was living through another. Mrs Duncan's seances offered an answer. But when she started foretelling naval disasters, she also attracted the unwelcome attention of the secret service. And so just weeks before the Normandy landings, absurdly, anachronistically, she was prosecuted for witchcraft and jailed. Was Nell a conjurer, a martyr or a security risk?  Hellish Nell was first published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. It remains in this revised edition a fascinating window into the unsettled spiritual and psychological mood of the times: a sensational tale of spectacle, credulity and cruelty, and of Britain's last witch.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49533867950353,"sku":"GOR013261088","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743375466769,"sku":"NGR9781802061994","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401871692049,"sku":"CIN1802061991G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50624508395793,"sku":"GOR014014807","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51282438586641,"sku":"GOR013488387","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51748225384721,"sku":"GOR014389968","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52453413060881,"sku":"NLS9781802061994","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1802061991.jpg?v=1751217320"},{"product_id":"hellish-nell-book-malcolm-gaskill-9781841151106","title":"Hellish Nell","description":"The 1735 Witchcraft Act was used for the last time in Portsmouth in 1944. 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Whether they settled in Jamestown, Salem, or Barbados, these migrants-entrepreneurs, soldiers, and pilgrims alike-faced one incontrovertible truth: England was a very, very long way away.In  Between Two Worlds , celebrated historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill brilliantly illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to recreate the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored then exploited them. 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And as Gaskill shows, in learning to live in an unforgiving world, they had begun a long and fateful journey toward rebellion and, finally, independence","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50687267012881,"sku":"CIN046501111XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53383644184849,"sku":"CIN046501111XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/046501111X.jpg?v=1751358626"},{"product_id":"ruin-of-all-witches-book-malcolm-gaskill-9780593467107","title":"The Ruin of All Witches","description":"\u003cb\u003eA gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place...Thought-provoking and absorbing.\" --Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWolf Hall\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. 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Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. 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As I finished his book, I began to see my own family’s past through his glass mountain' - Ian Ellison, Literary Review    'Gaskill's account is as much about what cannot be known about the past as what can still be reconstructed, even as the last witnesses to the Second World War pass from sight... his ability to explore the overgrown byways of history almost as a form of travel writing is again winningly on show here' - James Owen, The Sunday Times   Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph’s wartime adventures: he’d been a prisoner in Italy, and he’d cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he’d faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set Gaskill on his uncle’s trail…  What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From last-ditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisoner-of-war camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian Alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a long-forgotten episode of the Second World War.  Yet The Glass Mountain is about more than war: it’s a haunting exploration of what it means to encounter the past, and how we remember, forget and recover it. As he follows his uncle’s path through dusty archives and the landscapes, towns and villages of present-day Italy, Gaskill finds himself confronted by questions that go to the heart of how we think about the people who came before us: Why do stories matter? 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