The Manningtree Witches: A. K. Blakemore

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What do you think the challenges and opportunities of writing about well-known historical events might be for the writer of fiction? Most of the women killed were innocent of any crime, yet their persecution and punishment were sanctioned by both State and Church. Under a law introduced in 1604, individuals could be accused, tried and put to death for “witchcraft”, by which they meant devil worship. There is a direct line from this 1604 law to the massacres in England and those in Salem.

Here are some questions that you might like to consider or discuss with friends, family and fellow members of the Book Club as you make your way through the book.The reading experience is visceral, immersive and multi-sensory: you are really placed in the mind and body of the narrator; and in the smells, sights, touch, sounds of 1740s Essex. Witch hunts and witch trials, metaphorical and otherwise are sadly still very much with us in certain communities and societies. Similarly there's plenty of scope (as recent history has unfortunately shown us) for a pseudo charismatic leader to attain power and galvanise the disenfranchised to believe (more or less) whatever they are told, just in the same way that Matthew Hopkins once did. Blakemore has written a great and well researched novel, told largely from the perspective of Rebecca West (a subject of Hopkins attentions) and Many of the buildings in the centre of the town have Georgian facades which obscure their earlier origins. Notable buildings include Manningtree Library, which was originally built as 'a public hall for the purposes of corn exchange' and was later used around 1900 for public entertainment, [7] and the Methodist church located on South Street, completed in 1807. [8]

When civil war broke out in 1642, the ensuing chaos was disastrous: displaced people, outbreaks of bubonic plague, typhus and other deadly diseases, famine as a byproduct of war. The 1649 beheading of Charles I cut the figurative head off patriarchal society. In a novel about horrific historical injustices, what do you feel is or would be the difference between using a historical fiction genre and the horror genre to tell the story? Area: Fordwich CP (Parish)". National Statistics. 28 April 2004. Archived from the original on 12 June 2011 . Retrieved 24 September 2010.I wish freely to embrace the deliciousness of sin. To sin with abandon is, after all, the only prerogative of the damned.” Manningtree features in Ronald Bassett's 1966 novel Witchfinder General and in A.K. Blakemore's 2021 novel The Manningtree Witches. As was true for many Christian sects of the time, Satan was as equally present in the Puritanical world as was their judgemental God. Sinning without repentance was considered the devil’s will. Those who were unrepentant were branded “witches and “devil worshipers”. Thanks to his success as a witch-finder, doing “God’s work” in the deeply pious counties of East Anglia, Matthew Hopkins gained tremendous notoriety. Emboldened by a profession long-supported by Church and State, and now charging extortionate fees, Hopkins anointed himself “Witch-finder General”, traveling all over Eastern England claiming to be officially commissioned by Parliament to uncover and prosecute witches. In her new novel, “The Manningtree Witches,” A.K. Blakemore explores the consequences of that chaos for a group of village women through the viewpoint of a narrator named Rebecca West. West, a true historical figure, was among those prosecuted in Essex. Blakemore’s novel adheres to these events but fills in the lacunae in the documents.