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The acclaimed actor Kathryn Hunter plays all three witches in the forthcoming Hollywood adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth. The film is directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the central couple. Hunter tells Andrew Marr that she studied the witch hunts of the 17th century and was inspired by the \\u2018outcast women\\u2019 who survived and suffered. Her performance is rooted in something real, but also hints at something created in the mind of Macbeth.

Claire Askew\\u2019s latest collection of poems, How To Burn A Woman, is a cauldron full of spells, power and love. It\\u2019s peopled with witches, outsiders, and women who stand out. It too traces historic atrocities and celebrates the lives of those accused of witchcraft. But it also looks at contemporary relationships, of love bordering on infatuation, and the feelings of loss, bitterness and isolation at the end of an affair.

When peculiar things begin to happen in the frontier town of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, tensions rise and rumours spread of witches and heretics. What follows is a web of spite, paranoia and denunciation \\u2013 a far cry from the English settlers\\u2019 dreams of love and liberty at the dawn of the New World. The historian Malcolm Gaskill retells this dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in The Ruin Of All Witches.

Producer: Katy Hickman

(Image: Kathryn Hunter as one of the witches in The Tragedy of Macbeth, courtesy of Apple TV+)