Book Review: Witches: A King's Obsession, by Steven Veerapen

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Steven Veerapen is becoming one of my favourite authors, and his latest book, Witches, is a rich, illuminating, and thought provoking study. Steven makes a strong case for why the witch hunts were not simply a side‐show of history, and shows how they are integral to understanding early modern governance, belief, gender, and power.

 
The book challenges us to see how ideas that seem odd to us today, such as fear of witches, belief in demonic interference and supernatural threat, were embedded in society, politics, religion, and law in deeply serious ways.

 
At the same time, Witches shows how those ideas evolved, how they were contested, and ultimately rejected. King James emerges as a believer and a political actor. His obsession with witches forms part of a larger struggle to define authority and faith in a time of change and upheaval.

Witches is a well-researched and engaging history that restores depth and perspective to a subject often treated as lurid and sensational. I am happy to recommend Witches to anyone interested in the history of belief, fear, and power.

Tony Riches

I would like to thank the publishers, Birlinn Ltd, for providing a review copy 

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About the Author

Steven Veerapen is a writer of fiction and nonfiction and a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde who specialises in sixteenth-century literature. His first novel was The Queen’s Consort, which focused on Mary Queen of Scots’ infamous husband, Lord Darnley. Steven’s other books include the Simon Danforth trilogy, the Queen’s Spies trilogy, and three non-fiction works: Blood Feud, Elizabeth and Essex, and Slander and Sedition in Elizabethan Law, Speech, and Writing. Find out more at https://www.stevenveerapen.com/ and you can follow Steven on Instagram @steven.veerapen.3 and on Goodreads, Twitter @stevenveerapen and Bluesky @stevenveerapen.bsky.social