British Library | The Bideford Witches: John Callow and Shami Chakrabarti in Conversation @britishlibrary | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 4 minutes ago.
This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
On a Thursday in 1682, a magpie tapped at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Within a matter of hours, his family and servants had convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil, invoked by witchcraft. As the result of the fearful allegations that followed, three women of Bideford were condemned as witches. They were the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime.
In his fascinating book The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition, John Callow charts the changing attitudes towards the Bideford women, from revulsion to regret, into celebration in our own age. He is joined by human rights lawyer, campaigner and writer Shami Chakrabarti. Together they’ll uncover the tragedy of the Bideford women and ask what it tells us about present day persecution and the dangers of demonising others.
John Callow is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Suffolk, UK, who has written widely on early modern witchcraft, politics and popular culture. His latest book is: The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
Shami Chakrabarti (Baroness Chakrabarti CBE PC) is a human rights lawyer and campaigner, Labour Peer and was Shadow Attorney General, 2016 to 2020. She was the Director of Liberty from 2003 to 2016 and a panellist on the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics after the phone-hacking scandal. She was the Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and of the University of Essex and served on the Board of the British Film Institute (BFI) for many years. Shami has written and broadcast widely and is the author of two books; On Liberty (2014) and Of Women (2017).
This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
On a Thursday in 1682, a magpie tapped at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Within a matter of hours, his family and servants had convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil, invoked by witchcraft. As the result of the fearful allegations that followed, three women of Bideford were condemned as witches. They were the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime.
In his fascinating book The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition, John Callow charts the changing attitudes towards the Bideford women, from revulsion to regret, into celebration in our own age. He is joined by human rights lawyer, campaigner and writer Shami Chakrabarti. Together they’ll uncover the tragedy of the Bideford women and ask what it tells us about present day persecution and the dangers of demonising others.
John Callow is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Suffolk, UK, who has written widely on early modern witchcraft, politics and popular culture. His latest book is: The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
Shami Chakrabarti (Baroness Chakrabarti CBE PC) is a human rights lawyer and campaigner, Labour Peer and was Shadow Attorney General, 2016 to 2020. She was the Director of Liberty from 2003 to 2016 and a panellist on the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics after the phone-hacking scandal. She was the Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and of the University of Essex and served on the Board of the British Film Institute (BFI) for many years. Shami has written and broadcast widely and is the author of two books; On Liberty (2014) and Of Women (2017).
