My first novel, The Witching Tide, was inspired by a handful of historical facts, and the kernel of a ‘what if ’ idea.
The facts were – are – that between 1645-7, two East Anglian witchhunters, motivated by both religious zeal and a societally sanctioned misogyny, sent more people to the gallows than all other English witchhunts of the previous two centuries combined. An estimated 120 lives were lost. All were innocent, and the majority were women. Moreover, each witch-hunter deployed women
