How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi * * * *
This book was written by the women behind the Witches of Scotland podcast, and that connection really shapes the whole book. It is not just a history of the Scottish witch trials. It is also part of a wider attempt to make people remember them properly.
The book looks mainly at the Scottish witch trials, but it does not treat them as a vague dark chapter from the past. It explains how they happened. It looks at the religious atmosphere, the economic pressures, the legal structures, the books and ideas that fed the panic, and the way fear could be turned into accusation. It also goes into individual stories, which was important because the scale of the trials can make the victims blur together. When the book pauses on one accused woman, one community, one interrogation, or one execution, the history becomes much harder to keep at a safe distance.
One of the most interesting things about the book is how strongly it places Scotland beside Salem. Salem is famous. Salem has museums, films, books, tourism, and a very recognisable place in public memory. The Scottish witch trials involved far more people, lasted much longer, and caused far more deaths, but they are much less widely known. That contrast was one of the strongest parts of the book for me. It made me think about how history survives. Some tragedies become stories everyone knows. Others stay local, half remembered, or almost invisible.
In that sense, the book is not only about history. It is also about memory. Mitchell and Venditozzi clearly want these women, and the men who were also accused, to be remembered as real people rather than as folklore figures. They are not trying to make witches glamorous. They are trying to show that most of these people were ordinary victims of fear, misogyny, religion, poverty, neighbourly spite, and legal violence.
The book also broadens its focus towards the end. It looks at witchcraft accusations in the modern world, especially in parts of Africa where people are still accused, attacked, rejected, or killed because of witchcraft beliefs. It also points out that this kind of thinking has not disappeared completely from places we might like to think of as safely modern. There are still religious and political voices that talk about witches, devils, women’s power, obedience, and moral corruption in ways that feel disturbingly familiar.
That is where the book’s argument becomes much sharper. It is not simply saying, “Look how terrible people were in the past.” It is saying that the machinery behind these persecutions was built out of things that still exist. Fear of women. Fear of difference. Fear of poverty. Fear of people who do not fit into the expected shape of society. Fear that can be turned into punishment if the right people decide to use it.
I listened to the audiobook, and that was also an interesting experience. Claire Mitchell narrates the majority of it, and her Scottish accent gives the book a very strong sense of place. For me, that worked well because the subject is so rooted in Scottish history. At the same time, her accent is quite thick, so listeners who are not used to Scottish accents may find parts of the narration more difficult to follow. I could understand it, but I did notice that I had to pay closer attention than I usually do with audiobooks.
I liked that the book did not stay safely in the past. It starts with history, but it keeps pulling that history forward into the present. It shows how easy it is to say that witch trials are behind us, and how dangerous that confidence can be. Because when women’s rights are questioned again, when powerful people start talking about women as threats again, when fear becomes useful again, the past suddenly feels much closer.
I would recommend How to Kill a Witch to readers who are interested in women’s history, Scottish history, witch trials, religious panic, and the way public memory is created. It is informative, angry, accessible, and often very sobering.
The strongest thing about it is that it does not let the victims remain shadows.
It asks us to remember their names, and then it asks us to notice when the same old fears start speaking again.
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