Malcolm Gaskill

May 1, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Carlos Eire |Anthony Grafton |Malcolm Gaskill

Teresa of Ávila​ was a late starter, but that was no bad thing for a paragon of piety. A perplexed or misspent adolescence emphasised the transforming power of grace in both Catholic hagiography and puritan conversion narratives. She was born into a Castilian merchant family in 1515, but her fortunes were compromised by her family’s dubious status. Her converso grandfather was suspected by the Inquisition, leaving Teresa’s father to buy his way into respectable society.

Mar 13, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Malcolm Gaskill

Cambridge​ in the autumn of 1989 seemed to me a lonely place. I had just taken up that loneliest of occupations, doctoral research in the humanities: three years of self-exile in libraries and archives, hard-up and haunted by doubt. My girlfriend had gone to study in Russia, and I’d never felt more isolated or adrift. Every morning I’d cycle to my college and sit in the ancient library, situated above the porters’ lodge and its adjacent pigeonholes.

Jan 31, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | James Holland |Malcolm Gaskill

Ortona,​ Christmas Eve, 1943. A thriving Adriatic port only days previously, it now lay in ruins. The population of ten thousand was gone. In their place were two battalions of elite Fallschirmjäger – German paratroopers – defending what was left of the town, and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, who were under orders to take it. There would be no festive truce. Allied shells had siled down all day, Sherman tanks blasting house after house, driving the enemy deeper into the rubble.

Jul 24, 2023 | booksfromscotland.com | Malcolm Gaskill

Home > History > Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches By (author) Malcolm Gaskill One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story.

Apr 16, 2023 | unherd.com | Malcolm Gaskill

On the surface, there was nothing extraordinary about the lives of John and Joan Carrington. He was a carpenter in his late forties with a small estate, mostly eaten up by debts, in the town of Wethersfield in Connecticut. She was his wife and mother to their daughter, Rebecca, and son, John junior, from a previous marriage.