![]() ![]() The most powerful and Machiavellian figure of the Jacobean court had a vested interest in events at Belvoir.He would mastermind a conspiracy that has remained hidden for centuries. But as Tracy Borman reveals here, it is not quite typical. Like those other cases, it is a tale of superstition, the darkest limits of the human imagination and, ultimately, injustice – a reminder of how paranoia and hysteria can create an environment in which nonconformism spells death. The case is among those which constitute the European witch craze of the 15th-18th centuries, when suspected witches were burned, hanged, or tortured by the thousand. Witches traces the dramatic events which unfolded at one of England's oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago. And so the Earl of Rutland's sons will not be the last to die. The second son, the last male of the line, will not survive. ![]() Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. Tracy Borman gave a talk on this book at the 2013 Lincoln Book Festival, which I attended with my Mum, who now works at Lincoln Castle where two of the three women this book focusses on, Margaret and Phillipa Flower, were imprisoned and executed as witches (their mother, Joan Flower, died on the way to gaol). Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. ![]() As this book is about witch trials it is associated in my mind with October and Halloween. His body is 'tormented' with violent convulsions. Borman published Witches: A Tale of Sorcery, Scandal and Seduction in August 2013 and after reading a review of it in the Sunday Times during a lunch break I went out and bought it. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England's great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. ![]()
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