Claire Askew

Author and poet

Latest articles from Claire Askew

What it feels like ... to have an infamous ancestor

ANNE Askew wasn't a witch: she was so much more powerful than that. Anne was born in Stallingborough, Lincolnshire, in 1521. As a teenager, she was forced to marry Thomas Kyme, in place of her sister, Martha, who had been betrothed to Kyme, but died before the wedding. Anne's father offered up his younger daughter instead: she was only 15, and the marriage was to prove brutal and abusive.