Jill Dawson’s The Bewitching, with its compelling story and imaginative reconstruction of past beliefs, is set in lateElizabethan Huntingdonshire. A truculent old woman, Alice Samuel, arouses suspicions that she is responsible for sudden seizures experienced by the daughters of the local squire, Robert Throckmorton. The Throckmorton household itself, seen through the eyes of the narrator Martha, a servant-cum-governess, is an unhappy place, but Alice becomes the scapegoat for all the family’s troubles. Based on the real-life case of the witches of Warboys, Dawson’s novel highlights the swiftness with which a community can turn on one of its own.
– The Sunday Times
