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9781802062014

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Reviews

Praise for The Ruin of All Witches * - * A bona fide historical classic... recreating a brooding, dangerous landscape with supreme imagination and wisdom -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times, History Book of the Year * Simply one of the best history books I have ever read... a thrilling narrative -- Suzannah Lipscomb * BBC History, Books of the Year * Unforgettable ... one of those rare history books that haunts you long after you have turned the last page * Sunday Times * History at its finest... a perfectly rendered story of greed and paranoia -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times, Books of the Year * As compelling as a campfire story... deeply atmospheric -- Erica Wagner * Financial Times * Filmic vividness... Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms, and the result is thought-provoking and absorbing -- Hilary Mantel

In this rich, engrossing book, Gaskill succeeds in his aim of writing ‘a story that in good conscience feels real’... As I finished his book, I began to see my own family’s past through his glass mountain, spurred by a throwaway remark in the penultimate chapter detailing the lives and fates of the soldiers Ralph encountered in Italy -- Ian Ellison * Literary Review * Gaskill's account is as much about what cannot be known about the past as what can still be reconstructed, even as the last witnesses to the Second World War pass from sight... his ability to explore the overgrown byways of history almost as a form of travel writing is again winningly on show here... The book borrows its title from a symbol in Austerlitz by the German writer WG Sebald, a prism through which the past can be glimpsed but not grasped. Writing history is often like that. The past remains tantalisingly out of reach and, as Gaskill acknowledges, what we can comprehend of it can make it more complicated -- James Owen * The Sunday Times * Praise for The Ruin of All Witches * - * A bona fide historical classic... recreating a brooding, dangerous landscape with supreme imagination and wisdom -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times, History Book of the Year * Simply one of the best history books I have ever read... a thrilling narrative -- Suzannah Lipscomb * BBC History, Books of the Year * Unforgettable ... one of those rare history books that haunts you long after you have turned the last page * Sunday Times * History at its finest... a perfectly rendered story of greed and paranoia -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times, Books of the Year * As compelling as a campfire story... deeply atmospheric -- Erica Wagner * Financial Times * Filmic vividness... Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms, and the result is thought-provoking and absorbing -- Hilary Mantel

Author Information

Malcolm Gaskill taught history at British universities for nearly thirty years, where he developed an interest in mentalities, emotions and inner lives. Since leaving academia in 2020 to become a full-time writer, he has spent much of his time thinking about war and memory and different ways of engaging with the past. He is the author of six books, including Hellish Nell and The Ruin of All Witches, a Sunday Times bestseller, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Wolfson History Prize. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, and lives with his family in Cambridge.

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