Woman’s Lore by Sarah Clegg Head of Zeus, 368 pages, £27.99
BBC
This fascinating study is ambitious in scope, guiding the reader across millennia of cultural history by focusing on the near-ubiquitous phenomenon of the demonic or monstrous female with supernatural powers. She has taken myriad forms, adopting features from dogs, snakes, birds and fish, oscillating between the hideous and the incomparably lovely. But every culture that author Sarah Clegg discusses has included some version of her. Many of her names begin with the letter L: the Mesopotamian Lamashtu, the Jewish Lilith, and the Greek Lamia, often drifting constantly between ethnic, cultural and linguistic communities.