Posted in Art and Photography, Books, Fiction, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Witchcraft, tagged Adam Braver, Christine Middleton, Dark Places, Elif Shafak, Ferragamo, Gil Adamson, Gillian Flynn, Honour, Kate Grenville, Lancashire Witches, Livi Michael, Malkin Child, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe: Private And Undisclosed, Michelle Morgan, Misfit, Pendle Witches, Sarah Thornhill, Sofka Zinovieff, Stefania Ricci, The House on Paradise Street, The Outlander, The Witch & Her Soul on December 20, 2012 | 2 Comments »
My ten favourite reads of 2012, including new fiction; books commemorating the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, and the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witch trials; and some previously published books that I’ve just caught up with.
I had never read Kate Grenville’s work before, but Sarah Thornhill (and its predecessor, The Secret River) really evokes the stark beauty of the outback, contrasted with the tumult of the early settlers. (more…)
Posted in History, Witchcraft, Radio, tagged Pendle Witches, Lancashire Witches, Jeanette Winterson, BBC, Radio 4, The Curse of Pendle, Documentary, Carol Ann Duffy, Aquilon, Robert Poole, Diane Purkiss on November 28, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Installation on Pendle Hill: photo by Brett Dixon/BBC, 2012.
The Curse of Pendle is a 30-minute documentary, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on November 23rd, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Lancashire Witch Trials. It is presented by the novelist Jeanette Winterson, who grew up in Accrington, within view of Pendle Hill.
‘We all knew the stories of Chattox and Demdike – names you’d never forget,’ Winterson recalls. ‘Were they witches? Did they still haunt the hill? It scared us kids to death.’ (more…)
Posted in Film, History, Music, Witchcraft, tagged 1612 Underture, Adrian Flanagan, Dean Honer, Eccentronic Research Council, Kluncklick, Lancashire Witches, Lucy Hope, Maxine Peake, Pendle Witches, Sheffield on September 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The Eccentronic Research Council (ERC) is a collective founded by Sheffield musicians Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer.
1612 Underture, their new concept album, also features the Bolton-born actress Maxine Peake. (more…)
Posted in History, Theatre, Witchcraft, tagged Lancashire Witches, Orange Tree Theatre, Pendle Witches, Richard Shannon, Sabbat on July 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Sabbat is a play by Richard Shannon, based on the trials of the Pendle Witches. It was first staged at the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster, in 2009, and has been revived for a nationwide tour, marking the 400th anniversary of the infamous witch-hunt. (more…)
Posted in History, Television, Witchcraft, tagged Child Witnesses, Documentaries, Early Modern History, Jennet Device, Lancashire Witches, Pendle Witches, Phoebe Boswell, Simon Armitage, The Pendle Witch Child, Witchcraft on August 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Simon Armitage – one of Britain’s leading poets – was born in West Yorkshire. Like many local children, he would have been raised on stories of the Pendle Witches in nearby Lancashire.
A grimly intoxicating blend of history, crime and folklore is richly evoked in Armitage’s new BBC Four documentary, The Pendle Witch Child. Next year marks the fourth centenary of the notorious 1612 trial, the largest of its kind in England at the time. (more…)
Posted in Books, History, Non-Fiction, Witchcraft, tagged Early Modern History, Joyce Froome, Lancashire, Museum of Witchcraft, Pendle Witches, Wicked Enchantments, Witchcraft on July 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Wicked Enchantments: A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic by Joyce Froome
With its 400th anniversary approaching, the Pendle witch trial of 1612 is once again the focus of historical discussion. What was the largest investigation of its kind in England (until the Matthew Hopkins purges in East Anglia some thirty years later) is now, ironically, a mainstay of the East Lancashire tourist industry.
In 2007, John C. Clayton’s The Lancashire Witch Conspiracy brought a new focus on local history and genealogy to the now legendary case. This year, Joyce Froome, an assistant curator at the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, has brought her own knowledge of magic to the table. (more…)
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Witchcraft, tagged Lancashire Witches, Pendle Witches, William Harrison Ainsworth on January 25, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Original artwork by John Gilbert
William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) was a historical novelist and one of the most popular English authors of the later 19th century. Born in Manchester, he trained as a lawyer and practised in London, but his true ambitions were always literary. In his youth, Ainsworth read adventure stories and was an admirer of Dick Turpin, the highwayman whose exploits were the subject of popular legend. The tale of Turpin’s overnight ride from London to York on his steed, Black Bess, featured in Ainsworth’s first novel, Rookwood (1834.)
Among Ainsworth’s nearly forty novels, several were set in his native Lancashire, including his most famous work, The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest (1848.) (more…)
Posted in Brighton, History, Magazines, Witchcraft, tagged Brighton, HerStoria, Regency, Witchcraft on September 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
HerStoria is a new quarterly magazine, launched in Liverpool this February. Its byline is ‘history that puts women in their place’. Women’s role in history has sometimes been overlooked, though the same could also be said for other groups such as the working class and non-whites. Focussing on their stories helps us to understand the past as experienced by society at large, and not only through the narrow perspective of ruling elites. (more…)
Posted in Books, History, Witchcraft, tagged Lancashire Witches, Pendle Witches on March 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Lancashire Witch Conspiracy is a remarkable new book by John A. Clayton, focusing on the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612. He has undertaken extensive research to achieve what seemed impossible, bringing valuable new evidence to light. It was the largest witch trial in England at that time, surpassed only by Matthew Hopkins’ reign of terror as the Witchfinder General nearly four decades later. (more…)
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Witchcraft, tagged Elizabeth Gaskell, Gothic, Salem, Victorian, Witch on March 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I studied Elizabeth Gaskell’s North And South for my English Literature A Level, without much enthusiasm. Nearly 20 years later, I’ve taken a look at Mrs Gaskell’s other work. She also wrote a number of short stories in the gothic genre, seemingly a world away from her more familiar social realism. (more…)
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