Nigel explains the book’s back ground:

‘In the early 1980s, I was working with a small coven in a town on the coast of Suffolk, when one of the members mentioned that she was in touch with a family group of witches who were offering her some of their family recipes on herbal medicine. Would I be interested in seeing them and taking a copy too? Yes, I would be very interested, and so, some time later I was presented with the information that they had sent; a set of old-fashioned card-index cards, complete within their box.

I dutifully copied them all down into one of my work books and there they stayed, almost unused, for the next 35-odd years. I was never asked to keep this material secret nor, as far as I am aware, was it ever intended to be so. Therefore, I have decided to publish this material in its entirety, for two reasons. Firstly, in my work as a herbalist I am often asked if I know of a genuine, folk or traditional herbal that could be used as a working manual. Secondly, purely in the interests of preserving and disseminating this information to a wider audience of those who would find it interesting.

In the second/reverse book I have taken the exact same plants that are given in the first/reverse section of this work and have given their traditional, magical usages. This information was not included in the original notes I received from the family of witches, so I have no way of knowing how they utilised herbs for their magical practice, or indeed if they even did. However, I feel that this information should be included in a book of this type and have therefore endeavoured to fill this omission with the traditional folk-magical uses of the herbs previously described medicinally.’