The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Presentby Ronald HuttonYale University Press, 2017The subject of Bristol history professor Ronald Hutton's latest book, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present, is one everybody knows, a universal term of instant recognizability. All the more refreshing, then, that Hutton opens his searching account by asking “what is a witch?” and proceeding to mark out some thought-provoking boundaries.He defines this universal five ways: first, a witch is inimical, “a direct threat to their fellow humans,” working harm to friends and neighbors. Second, a witch is therefore not just an external but an internal threat to any community, a cell of the body social that has turned cancerous. Third, no witch is an island: each witch belongs to a set of witches, even a culture of them – “witches were expected to work within a tradition, and to use techniques and resources handed down within that tradition.” Fourth, witches are unpopular – “accorded general social hostility” (“of a very strong kind,” our author adds in what is only the first of many ultra-British phrasings throughout the book). And fifth, like any social disruption, witches must be resisted – “most commonly by forcing them or persuading them to lift their curses.”In the course of 350 pages, Hutton delves into the long history of witches in ancient and modern cultures, sifting evidence and consulting current scholarship with a thoroughness that will come as no surprise to readers of his impressive book Pagan Britain. He builds on the work of Carlo Ginsburg and other pioneers in the sociological dimensions of witches and witchcraft, always weighing the stereotypical reductions of the subject against what the evidence actually reveals:

One major variable is age. In many societies, across the globe, accusations are directed mainly against the elderly, but in others they focus on the young and in many more, age is not a determining factor. It is normal for suspects to have passed puberty, because children are much more rarely involved in the social tensions between adults that generate accusations, and much less credited with power of any kind. None the less, among the Bangwa of Cameroon, children were frequently accused, and even babies could be thought culpable, and, as will be seen, there were and are other societies that associated witchcraft with the young.

The result of all this prodigious research can make for careful, at times sloggy reading – readers looking for a more lively overview of the subject could profitably consult the new Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic by Owen Davies – but Hutton here delivers a rewardingly deep-core analysis of a human neurosis that's been around far longer than any religion.