Before Ian Bostridge, a lifelong Londoner,
became a classical tenor specializing in the German Lied [art song],
he read history at Oxford and became a Ph. D.
To this day there are historians who quote Bostridge,
not regarding classical music which he has performed for years,
but for his scholarship as a published historian.

He is the author of
Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650 -- c. 1750, Oxford, 1997.
This study, with its focus on a particular century,
details the repeal of the Witchcraft Act
and analyzes the documentation of the witch hunts in Scotland, for starters.
Much of the emphasis in this book is on politics.