If life is a drama, then for some men and women their most noteworthy moment on the stage has been at their unwilling exit. If Anne Boleyn's memory lives on it is because her head was lost, and the same fate ensures Charles I a place unique among English monarchs. The formal and deliberate taking of life has always aroused a fascination in those who have crowded in upon the scaffold or devoured the reports of dying speeches and dying moments, and provokes a morbid curiosity to this day. In this study of execution and the English experience, Stephen Banks examines the fate of witches,...