Book chat Steven Veerapen

Steven Veerapen is an author born in Glasgow. Fascinated by the glamour and ghastliness of life in the 1500s, he had written widely across fiction and nonfiction, with murder mysteries set in the Tudor era and biographical studies of James VI and I and, in August 2026, Henry VIII. He has a Masters in Renaissance studies and a Ph.D. investigating Elizabethan slander. When not writing, Steven teaches English Literature at the University of Strathclyde.

Witches - whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers - have been culturally relevant for centuries. For centuries, too, belief in the potency of witchcraft has been debated, accused witches have been hunted and punished, and film and TV productions have brought the witch and the witch-hunter to big and small screens.

But where did our perception of witches - good and bad - come from? What motivated wide-scale panics about witchcraft during certain periods? How were alleged witches identified, accused, and variously tortured and punished?

Steven Veerapen traces witches, witchcraft, and witch-hunters from the explosion of mass-trials under King James VI and I in the late sixteenth century to the death of the witch-hunting phenomenon in the early eighteenth century. Based on documents and the latest historical research, he explores what motivated widespread belief in demonic witchcraft throughout Britain as well as in continental Europe, what caused mass panics about alleged witches, and what led, ultimately, to the relegation of the witch - and the witch-hunter - to the realm of fantasy and the fringes of society.