Hamnet’s forest witch: how Agnes Hathaway chimes with the growing interest in ‘green witchcraft’

Hamnet’s forest witch: how Agnes Hathaway chimes with the growing interest in ‘green witchcraft’

The 2026 Oscars saw Jessie Buckley win best actress for her searing portrayal of a mother’s grief in Hamnet. But the film is also a story about a “green witch”, for Agnes Hathaway is no ordinary woman. She is a herbalist, healer and daughter of a “forest witch”. In Maggie O'Farrell’s prize-winning novel of the same name, we first meet Agnes in her “witch garden” as her stepmother disparagingly calls it. We learn of her love of nature and that sh…