For example she ends up meeting Shakespeare as the trouble is brewing in 1612 and then we hear how they met before, yet oddly it didn’t add anything to the story apart from placing Shakespeare in the narrative. My only slight quibble with the book was that Alice’s back story, whilst being an integral part of what Winterson’s fictional version of events and enjoyable, seemed to take over the book a little too much. I certainly had no quibbles with being made to feel very squeamish rather than simply screaming my way through reading it. In many ways, with rape, murder, witchcraft rituals and methods of torture all described in quite ‘The Daylight Gate’ is more horrifying than it is scary but that in itself is scary, just not in the ghostly way some people might be expecting. However it has got the trademark Hammer Horror guts and gore theme running through it. With a novel about witches and one by Hammer the natural question is of course’ is this book scary?’ Well no. I did also find it interesting that Winterson used Alice almost as a thread of narrative on how ill treated independent women were, and with what suspicion they were treated. I did find the historical context really interesting and have since been off finding out more. We also, through her past, get to see how society is at the time, from the reign of Elizabeth I, who we discover is in part responsible for Alice’s wealth, to the reign of James I, a man who brought fear to a nation through fears of his own. Through Alice we see the events as they unfold with the Device family as they live on her land we also see what happens when she becomes accused and what life is like in the dungeons of Lancaster Castle, which Winterson brings almost too vividly to life. It is Alice that Winterson focuses on for her fictional telling of the events. One of these people was Alice Nutter, a loose thread in the whole trial as unlike the other twelve she was a woman on means and money. It is from this point that several things including the effects of Alizon’s curse, rumours the Device family were all witches and a supposed meeting of witches in the Malkin Tower on Good Friday that lead to a trail of thirteen people, the biggest England had seen to date. He denied her where upon she placed a curse on him. As pedlar John Law met Alizon Device on one of the many tracks around Pendle Hill, on the 21 st of March 1612, and she asked him for some pins. ‘The Daylight Gate’ opens with the events that really caused the Pendle Witch Trial. ****, Hammer Books, 2012, hardback, fiction, 194 pages, kindly sent by the publisher
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