Considered a masterpiece by critics, John Buchan’s Witch Wood combines the author’s interests in landscape, Calvinism, and the fate of Scotland after the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
In seventeenth-century Scotland, religious struggles run rampant. Here, Young David Sempill, a moderate Presbyterian minister, pleas with his sect to have compassion for the remnants of King Montrose’s defeated army, who are being harried and slaughtered by religious extremists. But as pre-Christian nature worship and its accompanying black magicks seep forth from Melanudrigill Wood, Sempill himself disappears.
John Buchan (1875–1940) was a Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet, and novelist who wrote more than one hundred works. Of those published during his lifetime, he is best remembered for his adventure and spy stories, especially The Thirty-Nine Steps, which was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. During World War I, he worked as a war correspondent before joining the army, serving with the headquarters staff of the British Army in France. He was educated at Glasgow University and Brasenose College, Oxford. He became a barrister, member of Parliament, soldier, publisher, and governor general of Canada.
Antony Ferguson, Earphones Award–winning narrator, was born in London. He has performed successfully on both sides of the Atlantic and has played many leading roles in theater, film, and television.