Hellish Nell

Malcolm Gaskill’s brilliant book ... not only offers an indelible account of a paranoid country at war with enemies tangible and supernatural, but teasingly invites us to take our own position on witchcraft, and its unlikely practitioner. -- Alexander Larman * The Observer * A fascinating book. * Daily Mail * A great strength of Malcolm Gaskill’s book is that it provides ... a piece of working-class history: he makes Spiritualism comprehensible in the context of the utter bleakness of the lives he describes. -- Hilary Mantel * London Review of Books * Malcolm Gaskill has researched the whole story of Helen Duncan’s life with exemplary thoroughness: his account sparkles with dry humour, but it is not without sympathy too. -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph * Full of quirky detours into Spiritualism’s uniquely odd hall of fame. But its chief fascination, I think, lies in the way it shows how the Spiritualist movement, for a certain group of women, proved to be more liberating than winning the vote. -- Rachel Cooke * New Statesman * Malcolm Gaskill’s book is full, admirably researched, and in parts reads as if it had been dictated from the other world. * Daily Telegraph * Extremely readable ... full of trenchant phrases and vivid analogies. It is balanced, fair and a salutary reminder, in our secularised society, that belief in the supernatural is still endemic. * Literary Review * A tremendous story ... The human relationship with magic is one in which tragedy and farce are constantly intermixed, and Malcolm Gaskill shows how vividly this was true in early twentieth-century Britain. -- Ronald Hutton * Times Literary Supplement *