Bewitchingly Beguiling

The historian Ronald Hutton, an acknowledged expert in British folk-lore, and pre-Christian religions and paganism in Early Modern Britain, author of The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (1999) and The Druids: A History (2007), offers yet another treat to his readers. The book under review The Witch: A History of Fear, From Ancient Times to the Present offers a detailed and well researched account of a wide and divergent variety of beliefs about witches and engages with studies on witchcraft from ancient times to early modern period, and for that reason ‘the present’ in the subtitle of the book by Hutton is somewhat misleading. Who a witch is has been a subject matter of much debate among scholars of different hues for several decades, with some scholars examining its social and political aspects, and some others dealing with its more anthropological and folkloric elements. Hutton though begins his book with a somewhat simple definition of a witchas ‘one who causes harm to others by mystical means’.