Yet at odd times the book felt anachronistic, ticking as it does so many modern-day boxes. I loved huge swathes of “Witch Light”, and Corrag’s intimacy with nature is irresistible: she transports tiny snails and moths in her wild and unwashed hair, and communes with stags. I am myself drawn to these themes and to the notion that older women with a close-to-nature inclination and a stubborn streak were most likely to be identified, and even to self-identify, as witches. It combines many current trends: the fictionalisation of real lives and historical events evocation of nature, environment and place foraging, herbal medicine and living off the land. The book plants the Highlands in the reader’s soul and its imagery is unforgettable. Imprisoned and condemned to burn, Corrag tells her life story to Charles Leslie, an undercover Catholic supporter of the Stuart cause.

The story has a dual narrative – it’s told mainly by Corrag, a kind of child-woman falsely tagged as a witch, but guilty of having tipped off the MacDonald clan about their imminent betrayal and slaughter by Protestant forces. “Witch Light” is about early Catholic resistance to William III in the Highlands of Scotland, and the Glencoe Massacre. Susan Fletcher’s novel “Witch Light” is set in 1692, a handful of years after my Huguenot ancestors fled France and landed in England – hopeful of a warm welcome, since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had ousted James II (a king too prone to Catholicism) and installed Protestant William III on the throne.

The highland witch susan fletcher