known also as 'the Wise Wife of Keith'. All her bodily hair was shaved off in an effort to locate the Devil's Mark on her 'priuities', and she was 'thrawn' with a cord twisted excruciatingly round her head. After duly confessing her charges she was hanged and garrotted on Edinburgh's Castlehill in January 1591, 'thereafter her body to be burned in ashes and all her moveable goods to be escheat and inbrought to our sovereign lord's [i.e. King James's] use'.

Others suffered more brutally. Euphemia Maclean (who had benefited from Agnes's herbalism in seeking pain relief in childbirth) was sentenced to be burnt 'quick' – which is to say, alive, without the mercy of first being strangled. And the schoolmaster Dr John 'Fian' Cunningham had his fingernails pulled upvery interesting it is to see that even the business world is starting to feel challenged by the need for a new relationality.

In early 2008, when I tested some of the ideas in this book with a futures think tank run by WWF-UK in London, it was a senior executive from Saatchi's who seemed to be one of the most switched on to them. The greater part of me is, of course, suspicious. At the end of the day, it is hard to see how capitalism can survive without being cut-throat and without marketing forever inventing new tricks. But another part of me suspends judgement. There's a case for stopping and watching what happens at the passing place on that single-track road. Could it be that a 'new