00:00:00.160Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast
00:00:10.120because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted
00:00:15.240and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.780I'm Zoe Vendetotsi and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches
00:00:22.780and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.500The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.420And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:53.740Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:56.780this week we are quite remarkably on episode 43 which for a series of six it's really poor maths
00:01:04.920anyway today we've got a cracker for you we are introducing the new book by carolyn jess cook who
00:01:13.940is known on this book as cj cook and our book's called the lighthouse witches it comes out i think
00:01:20.380by the time you hear this it'll be out for a couple of days it's definitely worth reading
00:01:24.020but you could listen to it too I'm sure on Audible or equivalent. Carolyn's a marvellous
00:01:28.980writer, has written several novels already, teaches creative writing at the University
00:01:33.740of Glasgow so really knows her stuff. We had a really nice chat with her so definitely listen
00:01:38.000to that and then check out the book if you're into witches, if you're into families, if you're
00:01:42.600into witches and families this is definitely the book for you so we'll be talking about that
00:01:47.080afterwards. But before we go on to today's guest Claire I was just wondering is there any news
00:01:54.000you'd like to talk about? I mean, imagine my surprise at you asking that question, Zoe.
00:02:00.240Well, I suppose our first bit of news is we have written back to the Parliamentary Committee
00:02:05.520as they asked us. The Parliamentary Committee asked both us and the Scottish Government to
00:02:11.860write back to them after posing a number of questions about the issue of a pardon. So we've
00:02:17.540written back to them explaining that we would be more than happy to come and give evidence and speak
00:02:22.260to them and also identifying how we would like to go about a pardon which is by legislative form
00:02:28.300and I think we spoke about that on the last occasion. So that letter is back now in with
00:02:32.980them and we're now waiting to hear back from them or to hear it come back up. So as soon as we hear
00:02:38.000it's back before the committee we'll let everyone know what's happening with it then. It's really
00:02:43.180great actually to see the progress of the campaign because we've been working on it for such a long
00:02:47.000time to see it getting towards hopefully a more positive end result is really exciting so basically
00:02:54.020watch this space Claire absolutely can't wait for that and we've also got some positive update on
00:03:00.780statue news as well we saw this week that a woman her full name is Rachel Elizabeth Campbell but
00:03:08.640known as Betty Campbell a woman who was born in 1934 to a Jamaican father and Welsh Barbadian
00:03:14.920mother and became a teacher in 1963 and became a head teacher in a school in Wales. What happened
00:03:23.380was there was a decision taken to honour her for all the work that she'd done in the community with
00:03:28.420children and they put up a statue tour which marked what's described as the first of its kind
00:03:34.300which honours a non-fictional woman in a public space in Wales. So I thought that was fantastic
00:03:41.380that there had been a decision taken to honour a woman of colour non-fictional in a public space
00:03:48.360in Wales I hope it's only the first of many statues of its kind. Me too because it's so
00:03:53.260important as we've said so many times we need to see ourselves represented you know if we're
00:03:59.200going to have statues we need to make sure that at least half the statues are women I think so that
00:04:04.180the half of the population that's female can see themselves there I think it's really important
00:04:08.820And I love the fact that it's a teacher, but also, you know, because I am a teacher, but also because it's nice to see somebody who's clearly had such a positive impact on lots of children, you know, who have grown up to have fond memories and it's had a big impact on their lives.
00:04:24.340I think it's a really nice, positive thing that it's not a marker of war.
00:04:27.540It's a marker of somebody that has done a fantastic thing with their life, that they lived a really worthwhile, positive life.
00:04:33.240That's why I think so many women aren't shown in their community for the things that they've done, because we tend to just put down markers for people who have been killed in wars.
00:04:44.540And remember, even Sarah Sheridan told us right back at one of our earliest podcasts that, in fact, the names of women weren't put on plaques in relation to the war dead.
00:04:55.400So even those who had actually died in the war, their names weren't mentioned.
00:05:00.660I think I'm getting a wee bit obsessed though
00:14:38.000no it's great you just set yourself up to do it it's just just not absolutely a well-paid job
00:14:44.780that we know about as well it was something that made people a lot of money in any event he
00:14:49.280unfortunately was involved in the trial of Gailis Hardy Bessie Ramsey Marian Robertson and Catherine
00:14:55.460Smith so we remember them along with Janet Hardy and Johnnet Douglas women who were
00:15:01.460accused of being witches when of course they weren't
00:15:04.520so carolyn jess cook who is known on her recent books as cj cook is the author of the book that
00:15:19.860we're talking about today and it's called the lighthouse witches carolyn wrote her first book
00:15:24.260when she was seven and a few decades later her work has now been published in 23 languages has
00:15:29.480won loads of awards and has been optioned for both film and tv she writes about motherhood
00:15:34.880climate change and trauma and her fiction is often classed as gothic or psychological suspense
00:15:40.540her previous work includes the novels the boy could see demons and she has also written a book
00:15:46.520called the nesting which has been out for a little while i think it's just come out maybe in paper
00:15:50.480back and her new novel the lighthouse witches just came out a couple of days ago and that's what
00:15:55.480we're talking about today because of course it's as the title suggests it's about witches
00:15:59.440so please welcome to our podcast cj cook thank you it's great to be here so we're delighted to
00:16:08.240have you on because you have just released it's just gone out into the wild your latest novel
00:16:13.600the lighthouse witches which we know our listeners are going to absolutely love it's right up their
00:16:19.460street definitely right up our street as well yeah it's a fantastic setting delves into lots
00:16:25.940different aspects about what happened in the past what happens now small towns weird stories the way
00:16:33.060they get passed on is such a fab story so really really great to read it I'm wondering first of all
00:16:38.720what is it that brought you to write a book with this sort of theme so I've been working at the
00:16:45.240University of Glasgow since 2014 I commuted for quite a while we were based in Whitley Bay where
00:16:51.700there is a lighthouse and I can talk about that later but gradually as I spent time in Scotland I
00:16:58.940remember hearing about Scottish witch trials and that struck me because I had never thought
00:17:06.240that there were witch trials outside of I knew there were some in England and obviously Salem
00:17:12.380But I it had never occurred to me that they had sort of been in multiple places and in drips and drabs.
00:17:19.600I just sort of stumbled across information that really intrigued me.
00:17:23.720And when we finally relocated here in 2019, well, I learned that our new home was 20 minutes away from a site where 12 people had been executed for witchcraft.
00:17:37.980And that was really striking to me. That's such a, you know, that's really quite serious and horrendous and awful.
00:17:46.100And yet it seemed very low key. So the information was online, but the visibility of it, there was no kind of I mean, there's a small marker of the site.
00:17:56.560But it just seemed really striking to me that this is a very significant piece of history.
00:18:01.380And I came across it by accident. And it was very poignant too, because two of the accused were little boys. Now, there's some research that says that they managed to avoid execution. And then there's research that says that they did not, that they were executed. But it's terrible that these are young, young children. You know, the age of my son at the time, one of them was 11. And they lived in an estate close to our new home just outside Glasgow.
00:18:30.440So all of this very troubling, dark history just seemed super low-key.
00:18:38.160And the more I researched it, the more I would keep coming across sites that when I would go to the site, there was just nothing there.
00:18:48.620So, for instance, Guruk, which is about 30 minutes from me, I actually went there to write part of this book.
00:18:54.880And this was when I was really developing that witch element, because I have to say at first, I was very nervous.
00:19:01.820It took me quite a long time to write this book.
00:19:03.660I was very nervous about how I was going to make the two elements, the modern day story and the story in 1662, speak to each other in a convincing way.
00:19:14.340And when I was in Gurut, I thought I'll see if there's any sort of witch sites.
00:19:18.520And there was there was the Kempok Stone just behind the high street where it's a stone that was placed there by the Druids, apparently.
00:19:27.500And it has all this kind of fortune narrative around it that can bring good luck and people would leave little offerings.
00:19:33.720And a woman named Mary Lamont was 18 years old when she was accused of plotting with Satan to chuck the stone into the sea to sink all the ships.
00:19:44.340And when I went to the site, there is a plaque there, but there's no mention of this kind of part of history.
00:19:51.440And then I looked online and saw that Mary was executed on the grounds of a kirk in Inverkip.
00:19:57.660I went to the kirk, nothing about Mary.
00:20:00.700And so this kind of repeated, you know, astonishment at how much silence there is around this history.
00:20:08.080I think that emboldened me to really tease that story out and make sure it wasn't just a small element of the book.
00:20:15.260So that's how I discovered the history of Scotland's witches.
00:20:19.540It's really interesting. I like the way that you've sort of sewn together the modern day setting and the based on truth in the 1600s.
00:20:27.120I really liked that. I enjoyed that. And I think it's interesting as well that your central characters are women and girls.
00:20:32.400I enjoyed that because you do have a think about you know what what it would have been like to be
00:20:37.460vulnerable in a small place in a dangerous time now we get into the dangerous bit where you're
00:20:43.140talking about a book and you don't want to give away anything that actually happens in it so I'm
00:20:47.820I'm sort of thinking here what can I say that's not going to be a spoiler because there's so much
00:20:52.020the book's really it's complex with the way that it's worked out maybe you could tell us a little
00:20:57.380bit about how the book opens. That's a good way in, isn't it? So the book is, I'll say where it's
00:21:03.380set. It's set on a fictional Scottish island called Lawnhaven. I love islands. I'm sort of
00:21:09.420obsessed with islands and they do make for a good setting for a mystery because you immediately have
00:21:14.500that sense that you can control quite a bit that goes on. And I did, I'll talk about maybe the
00:21:19.860research where I went to various islands to just get a feel for them. And on that island, on Lawnhaven,
00:21:25.880there is a lighthouse which is derelict and Liv is a single mother in her mid-30s who is an artist
00:21:35.840and she's commissioned to come and paint a mural inside the lighthouse which turns out to be a bit
00:21:42.880of a strange commission because the actual mural itself is just very perplexing and doesn't make
00:21:49.320sense and is a difficult job. And she brings with her three daughters, her three girls.
00:21:55.960Sapphire is 15, Luna is nine and Clover is seven. And I suppose that's where I started
00:22:05.020with the book. I wanted to write about motherhood and the different stages, I guess, of motherhood,
00:22:09.620because I have a teenage daughter now and I was interested in writing about that relationship
00:22:14.820between the sisters and the single mother and her her own kind of I guess struggles in this new
00:22:22.400place she's out of her comfort zone she's never been to this part of Scotland she's on an island
00:22:27.780with people who are a bit suspicious of her and she's treated like a an outsider if you like so
00:22:32.720that's the context I guess or the kicking off point of the story and what she discovers in terms
00:22:39.020of the things that are going on with the lighthouse and the owner of the lighthouse and the
00:22:43.260Bothy that she's staying in are cause for concern. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah,
00:22:48.820definitely cause for concern. Did you do a great deal of research into islands and island life and
00:22:55.380that side of things, lighthouses, because they're all really important to the story?
00:22:59.660Yeah, this book took a good couple of years to write. So there was a fair bit of research over
00:23:04.120that time. As I said, I lived on the coast of northeast England and there's St. Mary's Lighthouse
00:23:11.560That was right near where we lived, which is really beautiful, a really striking, tall lighthouse.
00:23:16.960And we would often go there. So I think over time, that setting really struck me.
00:23:21.240And I would go in when I decided that I was going to, you know, use a lighthouse in this book.
00:23:26.040I did spend time in that lighthouse and read about the history of lighthouses, which I think, you know, indirectly sort of impacted the book.
00:23:34.380it was probably more in practical level that research played in because I had to understand
00:23:38.600how she would physically attempt to paint a mural inside a lighthouse. So all of that was
00:23:44.620was quite important. But as you say, island life was something that I needed to understand a bit
00:23:50.640more. And helpfully, I got stranded on Aaron. I went to Aaron to spend some time to write and
00:23:58.540the ferries got cancelled. And that was actually it turned out very well because I got that real
00:24:03.480flavour for what it is to just not have the ability to leave. So that was really useful.
00:24:10.660The other research that I did was in terms of Scottish folklore. I wanted to understand the
00:24:17.780myths and the narratives that sort of underpin the past. And then I also had this very serendipitous
00:24:27.140trip to Iceland where I was invited to go and teach at the University of Iceland. And when I
00:24:35.320went to, I had a day off and when I went to the National Museum, I came across these ancient spell
00:24:42.240books in a glass cabinet with all the, you know, the diagrams and the magical staves. And that
00:24:51.640just blew my mind. I was able to sort of research the history of magic and really understand
00:24:58.640a lot more about the kind of society that we had back then, how people did believe in magic
00:25:06.440to a huge extent. It was just a, it was just a given and that that continues in various parts
00:25:12.780of the world, even in the form of superstition. So a large part of the book is concerned with belief
00:25:17.900and the sort of stories that we tell ourselves.
00:25:20.440And of course, that's still relevant now.
00:27:42.400these accusations, the whole system of everything
00:27:46.280that underpinned the witch trials that enabled that.
00:27:49.000We could learn a lot, I think, by just studying it.
00:27:52.000That's certainly why we want to particularly shine a light on it.
00:27:54.900It's to pardon these people and to focus on the fact that this happened to people that were perfectly rational people, that were people just like us.
00:28:06.120I'm talking about the people that were persecuting as well as the people that were witches.
00:28:09.740They were all just like us, but they lived in difficult times. They were looking for scapegoats.
00:28:15.940They had a narrative. They had a different, the outside of their world was different in that they had a different belief system.
00:28:22.700but within that belief system it caused them to do terrible terrible things in the name of good
00:28:29.700that's what they thought they were doing and that's that's why it's so scary because in
00:28:34.580killing innocent women they thought they were saving their society yeah I think it's really
00:28:39.340interesting with the parallel with the pandemic you know I think that one of the biggest fears
00:28:43.320then absolutely must have been illness the fact that they didn't know what was wrong with people
00:28:47.760and they didn't know what to do generally I mean I know there were there were obviously some folk
00:28:51.320cures and that sort of thing which is partly where the trouble stems from as well for some of the
00:28:55.380accused obviously but that the fact that you there's this kind of scary universe out there
00:29:01.580that could strike down a whole family and that they're you know people would really be desperate
00:29:06.320to try and find an explanation for that so they wouldn't feel as powerless and you definitely go
00:29:11.440into that in the book again without giving anything away I think that's really interesting
00:29:15.960sort of looking at that in the way that people really wanted to explain terrible things I mean
00:29:20.820now at least we know the pandemic kind of works in a particular way and there are particular things
00:29:26.120you can do to help your chances and so on and try and stop it from being spread and we don't view
00:29:30.960it as well most of us i do read the odd person on facebook where i think oh you've got a very
00:29:35.740interesting interpretation but we generally don't think that it's some sort of spooky thing that has
00:29:40.500been visited upon us you know we can understand to an extent the science behind it so i find that
00:29:45.060really interesting did you make up any of the folklore concepts in the book or are they
00:29:51.440like real things that people really did believe in so in terms of how they use the magical staves
00:29:57.880that's all based on research and and and fact can you explain to listeners what that is yes yes i
00:30:04.700will so um when i went to iceland and i learned about the the spell books and the grimoires which
00:30:13.660is a beautiful name and it is i know it it's grim it's a memoir it's yeah it's all the things
00:30:23.000and there's no there's a sort of noir kind of sound as well and there it's just it's a great
00:30:28.620name um so what and i had started writing the element of the book where there's a sort of
00:30:35.240jotter of someone's diary and i decided to make that a grimoire as well but a grimoire contains
00:30:41.420typically different diagrams, if you like, that you can etch onto the bottom of barrels,
00:30:50.160for instance, to prevent the water from being spoiled, for instance. There's different
00:30:55.860magical staves to assist with. There's a lot around fishing. So to enable a fair journey and
00:31:03.640a good catch and a safe return home, there's all these different staves that people would,
00:31:08.360I guess paint onto objects or onto the skin I think there's a love charm where you have to put
00:31:15.760it on you have to to draw it on your own breast but you have to give yourself a nosebleed first
00:31:21.140and use the blood to paint it on your your breast and there's lots of um magical things
00:31:27.080gothic thing I've ever heard right yeah I thought gosh it's it's not just a nice wee diagram then
00:31:33.140you've got to actually really commit to this I'm thinking of describing Ikea instruction packets
00:31:39.800now as grimoires and they'll make me more interested in actually trying to get to grips
00:31:44.320with them you know yes if you get your grimoire right if you follow your grimoire you get this
00:31:49.600magical chest of drawers yes so that gave me a good appreciation as well around the sort of
00:31:58.520levels of superstition and and the way people really believed in magic and i i think also i
00:32:04.460learned from one of your podcasts that the distinction between what we call white magic
00:32:08.800and black magic wasn't as as clear-cut it was just magic and then there seemed to be this kind of
00:32:14.480interpretation of certain types of magic that are crossing a line um but obviously there was much
00:32:20.100more of a i guess political agenda that seems to be directed towards women it was where they got
00:32:25.780their power from that was that was what it was all about i think it was said that if women were
00:32:31.260getting power as witches they couldn't possibly have got that power themselves obviously they had
00:32:36.780to get it from somewhere else and that somewhere else was the devil that's how the the narrative
00:32:42.080worked but it's the getting your power for the devil and allowing the devil to work through you
00:32:46.860with witchcraft is what the problematic was but if you didn't have anything to do with the devil
00:32:51.800if you were a self-respecting charmer or something like that then then that was fine but the difficulty
00:32:58.200was that the line between that is a narrow one you know how difficult would it be for someone to
00:33:04.360say well you did give me that charm but it didn't work and the opposite happened somebody it was a
00:33:08.880charm for health I got sick or you know a family member got sick and then they died and I think it
00:33:14.460was witchcraft yeah that's where it became so difficult but it's interesting isn't it that
00:33:19.880through the centuries there's a pervasive idea that continues to this very day and is very popular
00:33:26.880about witchcraft about modern day signs and symbols and how we interact with the world
00:33:34.600and what we can do to make our situation better when we interact with the world yeah i also find
00:33:42.820it very interesting that in the case I mentioned the Paisley trials were I think it was it was
00:33:50.000definitely 12 people who were executed but there had originally been 30 accused but the reason
00:33:55.580that it sort of whittled down to 12 was because the others bought their way out so that to me was
00:34:03.100very interesting that there's still obviously a socio-economic factor here and who actually
00:34:09.260ended up paying the price well they didn't pay any i mean you know they were innocent but you
00:34:14.840know you could be accused and then kind of pay your way that could certainly happen in some
00:34:20.160situations there's also some situations where it didn't matter how much money people threw at it
00:34:24.880they would still be killed but it does show that again it's nothing changes is there corruption
00:34:30.780was there corruption then yes you know and are there corruptions in areas of the world now yes
00:34:36.480it's the same it's the same idea if you've got money you're definitely better off in the world
00:34:41.340I think fundamentally the more kind of research that I did into this area the more I was moved
00:34:47.840by the the humanness these were people and the sort of details that you gather as you research
00:34:55.600tell so much they bring a nuance to the story because you can and I think one of your other
00:35:01.440guest said this, that you can almost become desensitized or lost in the language of witch
00:35:07.800trials and executions and burnings. And there's a risk, I think, of just forgetting that these
00:35:14.440are just people. And, you know, when I, again, I think it was one of your podcasts, you know,
00:35:20.060that one of the accused was actually in prison for five years. So this is not just being put
00:35:26.440into jail for a couple of nights. This was, I mean, what would that do to you as a person?
00:35:31.200So even if you don't end up being executed and you survive somehow that kind of imprisonment
00:35:38.580and being imprisoned under suspicion of being a witch, you're not going to be treated
00:35:43.000like a modern day prisoner. You know, your body's going to have deteriorated because of lack of
00:35:48.820nutrition. You goodness knows what kind of torture and abuse you've suffered. And I also find that
00:35:54.820when you read the accusations made against people that they, or the things that they confess to,
00:36:01.780you can only imagine why they confess to such things, knowing what that confession will bring.
00:36:07.240It's a horrendous history to confront. And I suppose that's why the silence around it really
00:36:13.600astonished me and continues to astonish me. Well, we're doing all we can, and you're certainly
00:36:18.560doing your bit Carolyn to promote the idea of us looking at our history and coming to terms with
00:36:25.980it and I mean I hope people reading the book you're very very generous in you know mentioning
00:36:30.880us and mentioning others in the book and in talking about these things and I hope people
00:36:35.000who read the book are spurred on to do their own researches as well that would be really really
00:36:40.200great if it got them to thinking about I wonder in our local area what happened in the 17th century
00:36:45.740because it's very relatable I think what you do in the book
00:36:48.560is you create a situation where you think they were just people just kind of living their lives.
00:36:52.960And the thought that it was often, you know, mothers of small children and the way that you've described it in the book,
00:36:58.680it really does bring it to life. The idea that this was just people just going about their business and it could have happened to anybody.
00:37:03.880It's really very startling. And I think fiction, you know, I would say this, but I think fiction in itself is kind of a magical thing,
00:37:10.720because it means you can read the facts over again and it's going to have an impact on you.
00:37:15.920But when you start to have a fictional character that you're going through what they're going through on the page, I think it makes it so much more real.
00:37:23.040Must have been hard work for you writing it from that point of view, because it's grim.
00:37:27.100This book took, as I said, a lot longer than than usual because, well, I think structurally there's some things that I was trying that I I thought, gosh, how am I going to pull this off?
00:37:38.700because it felt like I was mashing together too many different genres,
00:37:42.520but also trying to make sure that all of the characters,
00:37:46.160both in the modern day and in the past, were brought to life.
00:37:49.820And yes, writing some of the more traumatic scenes was very difficult.
00:37:54.820But as I said, I think I was just really spurred on.
00:37:57.000I mean, when I would come across names in the digital editions
00:38:01.680or the digital archive of the Highland Papers,
00:38:04.860and you would just have names of people.
00:38:06.780So sometimes we are able to get a bit of a picture around what happened to someone like Mary Lamont in Guruk.
00:38:13.800But, you know, there's some people who are just mentioned by name and they're accused and then they're executed.
00:38:20.200And that moved me, that real silence there.
00:38:23.320I just thought, you know, we have no idea who these people were.
00:38:26.380And they met with such a troubling and just terrible fate.
00:38:32.000And what really moved me as well, because I do think about grief a lot and I write about grief.
00:38:36.440their families had no way I mean what a complicated way to grieve they couldn't bury their body they
00:38:44.240wouldn't have you know a tombstone or a grave to go and commemorate that even in terms of how they
00:38:50.020would think of them or remember they would such a stigma probably followed them forever how
00:38:56.440traumatic for them who were left to mourn that that really struck me that's almost a horror we
00:39:04.440can't really comprehend in that belief system of if you're not buried in your faith in the church
00:39:11.920yard you won't go to heaven you won't see god you're banished forever you won't reconnect with0.90
00:39:18.420your family all those sorts of things that was a horror beyond the death that was awaiting women0.84
00:39:24.300they knew that if they were going to be executed as a witch's and a family and you're right that0.75
00:39:29.340is something that the family that were left as you see it's not just grief it's it's a grief
00:39:35.280that's so much more complicated for them and when I was reading your book what I was thinking of
00:39:40.940quite a lot without spoiling anything was the trauma of loss and also intergenerational trauma
00:39:47.280the fact how that echoes through the centuries and what people will do when they love people
00:39:53.500and they lose them that was a very very powerful driver in a number of the main characters doing
00:40:00.640things yeah I'm really glad that that comes through in the lighthouse witches because
00:40:04.920yeah I think that the more I thought about this because research is a funny thing isn't it you
00:40:10.780begin with quite what's the word clinical almost data the names and the dates and the places and
00:40:18.180what kind of facts you can gather around what happened.
00:40:22.760But as you it's the sort of silences that you have to sort of work with and try and
00:40:28.420connect sometimes very disparate pieces of information.
00:40:31.480But when you, you know, for instance, when you see the same family name come up on the
00:40:37.900database and you recognize that it was it was relatives, it was likely mothers and daughters
00:40:43.700who were burned together, who were executed together.
00:40:46.780A large part of a family would be just devastated by this accusation.
00:40:53.220And it's the manner of the accusations as well.
00:40:55.580Sometimes it's the accused feels that they can maybe accuse someone else or or maybe it was, you know, someone coming in and saying, was so and so involved?
00:41:05.240And maybe they give the slightest nod or something that's taken as a affirmative answer.
00:41:10.280and this you know pattern and cycle of of accusations just seems to have brought down
00:41:16.720so many different people and it's it's really heartbreaking yeah I think you've done a good
00:41:21.340job of that it does make you think about the connection you know there's one particular part
00:41:25.240of it where a mother is executed and who's going to look after her children there's no state care
00:41:30.920at that point you know this idea about being just a child just being left and who's going to look
00:41:36.140after them what's going to happen to them i think you you look into that really interestingly as
00:41:40.300well um it's a fantastic book and i think our readers are definitely going to enjoy it i think
00:41:46.080you've captured the setting so well not only of scotland but of the island and then also the
00:41:51.680lighthouse is so creepy and i don't know why anybody would choose to go inside that lighthouse
00:41:56.420as you're describing certain parts of which i'll not spoil i was thinking why would you do that
00:42:01.420what are you doing bad things are happening if you go down that bit because of loss yeah i'd be
00:42:07.420too scared i think i don't think it would matter how how much loss i'd suffered i would be like
00:42:11.980don't go over to that bit oh well that's that's good to hear yeah i i love the sort of paradox
00:42:18.360of lighthouses that i think they're they're very romantic symbols but they can also be
00:42:22.540very creepy they're for keeping people safe that is the strange thing about it
00:42:27.540yeah they're these beacons aren't they that that steer the ships and and warn and protect and
00:42:34.340they're hopeful but they can also be very creepy so i i wanted to use that as this sort of um i
00:42:40.820think a setting is very important in a novel to bring together all the different sort of themes
00:42:46.620and the ideas of the book can be rooted in that setting you definitely struck it there i mean the
00:42:52.200remoteness the kind of loneliness the spookiness forest it's all there yeah so the lighthouse
00:42:59.800witches is out now by cj cook you can find it in all good all good bookshops i'm sure and online
00:43:05.880in various places it's been really great talking to you carolyn thanks for giving up your time to
00:43:11.100speak to us about your books being ace and we look forward to seeing what you come up with next yeah
00:43:15.760i was going to say now that you've delved into the world of scottish history and which trials