Tain author of Last Witch of Scotland gets Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2024 accolade
A STORY written by an Easter Ross writer about the last person in Britain to be executed for witchcraft has today been named Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2024.
The award from the UK’s leading bookshop chain champions books by authors based in Scotland, or titles that have a strong Scottish setting.
Philip Paris called it “a huge and unexpected honour”, adding: “Writers work away in solitude constructing their sentences, plots, characters and storylines with no certainty that a single word will ever be seen by another person.
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“Writers work away in solitude constructing their sentences, plots, characters and storylines with no certainty that a single word will ever be seen by another person.
“To have this accolade from the UK’s leading bookshop chain is tremendous and I’m extremely grateful to Waterstones for giving a wider voice to these characters from the past.
“What inspires me most as a writer is to find an important historical event that hasn’t been written about before in the form of a novel, and which is a story crying out to be told because the themes will resonate so strongly with people today.
“This is what drove me to create my debut novel, The Italian Chapel, and fifteen years later it’s what has driven me to write The Last Witch of Scotland.”
The Last Witch of Scotland reimagines how Janet Horne and her daughter came to be accused, and their subsequent fight to prove their innocence in a society biased against women.
Set in the Scottish Highlands in 1727, Paris’ story of love, loyalty and sacrifice sheds light on one of the country’s darkest periods of social history and has been a firm bookseller and customer favourite since its publication.
Angela MacRae, Waterstones Scottish buyer, says: “The Last Witch of Scotland is a wonderful piece of historical fiction with an absorbing plot, rich factual detail, and fabulous characters.”
She said: “We cannot wait to get this novel into the hands of even more readers, as we are convinced they will be as enthralled as we are.”
Iain MacLeod, commercial expert for Scotland, added: “Told with sensitivity, with grace and with righteous anger: The Last Witch of Scotland is a book for the ages, of timeless tragedy, and just that tiny spark of hope that things can be different.”
Paris is best known for his non-fiction and historical fiction books about Orkney’s famous WW2 Italian chapel, Orkney's Italian Chapel: The True Story of an Icon and The Italian Chapel.
His work is varied, ranging from Men Cry Alone, which broke new ground in raising the profile of domestic abuse against men, to Casting Off, a hilarious story of residents in a Highland care home.
He was born in Gateshead, moved from Kent to the Highlands and lives in Tain, just fifteen minutes from Dornoch, where Janet Horne’s memorial stone is located, the spot where she was believed to have been executed.
