A Lay-Author’s Thoughts On Women and Herbalism A stained glass window depicting Hildegard von Bingen at Église Sainte-Foy, Alsace via Wikimedia Commons When I sat down to write The Gilded Crown and thought ‘wouldn’t it be interesting if the main character were a medieval herbalist’, I was blessedly unaware of the enormous rabbit hole I was about to tumble into head-first. Cue many, many hours spent trawling books and articles on herblore and hedgewitchery, everything from the historical – Culpeper’s Complete Herbal and English Physician – to the scientific – Dauncey, Howes and Larssons’ Plants that Cure and Plants that Kill series (if you ever want to know the chemical composition of any plant poison, they’re your stop) – to the charmingly whimsical, such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage series. It was all fascinating and inspired me to make my own herbal oils and decoctions, but in the process, I came across Burkhard Bilger’s review of John Rid...