The novel unfolds primarily through Rebecca’s first-person point of view. But it shifts sporadically to third person to describe scenes and events in which Rebecca is not present. These unnecessary shifts can be jarring and confusing. Rebecca’s diction is detailed and evocative. Replicating the idioms of 17th century England, it is replete with graphic descriptions, pungent odors, and immersive imagery. The diction is generally effective but can occasionally veer toward being too flowery and obscure. 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. Manningtree features in Ronald Bassett's 1966 novel Witchfinder General and in A.K. Blakemore's 2021 novel The Manningtree Witches.

Artist susan pui san lok was one of the artists selected and she chose to recreate Old Knobbley in her work 'A Coven A Grove A Stand' which explores ideas of history, myth, collective witnessing and resistance. The following is excerpted from Fear and Loathing, the sound walk created as part of this project, which you can dowload from Discovering Britain: For centuries, the people of the British Isles practiced Paganism, a Nature-based spirituality that was bolstered by the influx of the Celts and promulgated through local belief and folklore until the changing religions of the Roman Empire sought to extinguish it. For that [women] are commonly impatient, and more superstitious, and being displeased, more malicious, and so more apt to bitter cursing, and far more revengeful, according to their power, than men, and so herein more fit instruments of the Devil. You can watch an interview with AK Blakemore about the book here on the SavidgeReads YouTube channel .Alison Rowlands: "The idea being that that would give you proof, proof very much in inverted commas, that they were witches. But it amounted obviously to torture, because watching was effectively sleep deprivation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the image on the front of the pamphlet, the Hopkins publication in 1647, it shows him and two women on chairs and they would have been watched. They’d often be tied to the chairs with the familiars. But you could only do that in somebody’s home, because that could often go on for two or three days and nights and but you’d have local people helping, acting as, they were called watchers, they would actually watch to see what would happen. So there’s a massive communal investment of effort in the witch finding." As Imogen Simon argues strongly in her documentary, these eight women of Manningtree were victims of misogyny as much as religious fervor. The highlighting of misogyny is correct and is often overlooked in discussions of witch-trials. Eastern England of the 1640s was a Puritan stronghold, a society in which women were considered culturally inferior to men. It was a culture in which women could be accused so readily of being witches. We see through Rebecca how impossible it is to avoid accusations of witchcraft once placed: how for example she asks can she provide an alibi if she can apparently be in two places at once via transportation, or supposedly carry out her nefarious schemes at a distance via invisible imps; and how she asks can she testify truthfully to save herself when “I can say again and again, a thousand times.. that I am not a witch and have not traffic with the Devil not his spirits, and it will account for nothing. But if I say once that I am, then it counts for everything” Contemporary woodcut depicting Matthew Hopkins with witches and their familiars (“imps”), published 1647. Shakespeare's Manningtree to celebrate bard's anniversary". Harwich and Manningtree Standard . Retrieved 17 November 2021.

As he wrote in his book, The Discovery of Witches, published in 1647, Hopkins reported to the Judges of the Assize Court that a cabal of “witches” met regularly close to his house making sacrifices to the Devil (although he does not specify what this entailed). He reported that he had overheard one of the women instruct her “imp” – a demon in animal form – to fetch another witch. This woman, he said, was then seized, stripped naked and searched for marks of the Devil. How do you think a balance between historical accuracy and creating an evocative fictional world has or can be achieved? This book was recently included on a very impressive longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize for Debut fiction which prompted me to read it. Torture produced confessions but not the truth. Blakemore’s clear agenda is to give these silenced women a voice, and in fiction, she can thrust herself into Rebecca’s consciousness. The discipline of history doesn’t allow that, which often leaves it gesturing toward the silencing without being able to give it voice.

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For decades, these events were the stuff of folklore and horror movies, while serious historical studies focused on religious conflicts and “mass hysteria” as motivations for the judicial murder of thousands of women. More recently, Marxist feminist historians have begun to place the witch trials at the centre of accounts of early capital accumulation. Silvia Federici argues convincingly that witch hunts were not a relic of medieval superstition, which was gradually superseded by Enlightenment rationalism. Rather, they were a product of modernisation, being rooted in the disintegration of the peasant community, already suffering from the enclosure of the land, punitive taxation and incarceration in workhouses. We can however imagine that this path was regularly walked by some of the accused women, like Anne Leech who lived at Mistley and her daughter Helen Clark from Manningtree. They would have been familiar with this way; in good times treading it between the villages to visit each other, and later during the dark days of the witch trials, perhaps fleeing along it for their lives. Historic England. "Methodist Church (1240124)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 23 July 2023. The Manningtree Witches" by A. K. Blakemore, written in beautifully crafted literary prose, describes the Witch Craze of the English Civil War and is interspersed with excerpts from the Essex Witch Trials of 1645. Rebecca West's coming-of-age included accusations of witchcraft, imprisonment, teenage angst, stirrings of romance and the reading and understanding of the gospel. Her character development, as well as the detailed descriptions of other women and girls accused of bewitchment, was masterfully penned. This debut work of literary fiction from poet A. K. Blakemore is a read I highly recommend.