We Are All Witches

From 1563 to 1736 Scotland put thousands of women to death for witchcraft. Their supposed crimes have much to tell us about attitudes to women in the past, and in the present day. This book introduces sixteen women who lost their lives or lived in the long shadow of the persecutions.

‘Witches’ who, like MARGARET AITKEN, confessed, implicated others, even aided the hunters before they were burned.

Nonconforming women like MARY MACLEOD, who saw their reputations tarnished when they did not bend to society’s expectations.

Creatures of the imagination, like Robert Burns’s NANNY, who embody deep-seated associations between womanhood and the occult.

Weaving fiction with the facts where these are known, We Are All Witches invites the reader to explore the forces at work in one of the darkest episodes of Scotland’s history and consider their echoes in the present day.