Reviews and Comments

Several of Andrew Greig's novels have drawn inspiration from the literary ground of Scotland. "The Return of John MacNab" replayed John Buchan's class-bound romp for our times. Novels such as "When They Lay Bare" and "Fair Helen" have drawn from Border Ballads. This novel is a bildungsroman exploring the early years of the poet and courtier William Fowler, as a student seeking his fortunes while navigating the politico-religious disputes of Scotland during the regency of James VI. Affairs of heart and mind are negotiated only with difficulty in the zealotry of the new Godly State by the young student - and all the more so for the excluded woman of the working class. As Fowler's handwriting skill carries him into double-dealing, there is the emerging role of the scribe as agent. While the novel only briefly touches on Castelnau and Walsingham, with whose schemes the real-life Fowler would become fankled, the youthful adventures in the novel set the groundwork for a career in subterfuge, of the letter forger's confection of false truth for the convenience of his patrons.

There was a linear scheme where superstitious beliefs and practices such as the persecution of "witches" were blown away by the emergence of science in an irrevocable "disenchantment of the world". This came under challenge both from readings of the paper of such as Newton and Boyle and from the alt.credulity systems swilling around in our times. Among the merits of Hunter's book is the presentation of differing perspectives in the new science (for example, documentation-led or principle-led), and freethinkers' challenges to theology, but also his broader appreciation of the growing influence of the doctors (under which demonic possession could be recharacterised as internal disturbance and thereby psychologised) - this last recalling Szasz. Perhaps most importantly, Hunter seeks to look outside the historian's core assets of published works, seeking the traces of trenchant sceptical ridicule of convention from the new Coffee Houses. From Old Comedy in Greece to the present day, ridicule can be effective in corroding the ideologists' system building. That said, a reviewer of Hunter's recent book on Atheism in the early modern period noted the absence of material on the perspectives of women and on the labouring classes, which could also be said of this book. But that is the situation of those "hidden from history".