He can also handle harder stories that blend history and culture too, sometimes ones you might never have thought of.

We meander from the long lost past, meditating on lives of those still residing in the few remaining charnel houses to the life affirming weddings now taking place in graveyards like Arnos in Bristol. Peter Ross takes us on a tour of his favourite graveyards and introduces us to those who reside there, and, where temporally feasible, those who love them.Each chapter is standalone (although on the basic theme of death and graveyards) and some of them, especially later on, seem a bit unfocused, but I learned a lot and enjoyed it enormously. There are those who are interested in paying their respects to famous people, their own family members, or someone who represents something connected to their identity. I expected to race through this book as the subject matter fascinates me however I struggled at times as the book reads as a wall of text with little room for the personalities of the people spoken to or of Ross himself.

Several of the bloggers and tour guides I've discovered online appear here, which I thought was particularly cool. How she took off his shroud just before he was put in the ground and how it now hangs above her fireplace. He would then discuss lots of different graves on these graveyards, sometimes describing an entire biography of one person who was buried there, before moving onto the next grave. Whether with a ton of earth above us or an hour and a half at 900C in the incinerator, all our stories come to an end sometime.

Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back.

In the midst of death, Peter Ross bring light and life to a subject that we should all talk more about. You will not easily pass by the forgotten graves of unbaptised children in Ireland; graves which had to be dug by their parents because the church would have nothing to do with them. This book has opened up the social history that can be found, it's not just a place where the dead lay under the soil.If they did, they probably wouldn’t find themselves talking to a woman whose husband had committed suicide while being mentally ill. Like Ross, I found solace in local graveyards throughout the pandemic, and have done pretty much my whole life – they’re beautiful, quiet, soothing greens spaces teeming with life and mystery. We have been walking in cemeteries here and abroad for many years – they provide an immediate condensation of their local histories and cultures and a usually deserted place to walk in an urban setting. Ross notes that Arnos Vale is not only a site for burial, it has proven to be a popular wedding location as well. One of my favorite essays in the book introduces an Iranian father who built an exquisite monument to his 11-year-old son in London's poshest cemetery.

Moving, warm and redemptive, it's a sort of travelogue - we are transported to remote Scottish island burying grounds via the bustle and crush of east London to the forgotten resting places of soldiers who fell in the first world war. It also allowed me to look at the tombstones from a perspective of legacies and remembrance they represent.One such is a patch of wasteland on the edge of a Belfast golf course where Roman Catholic doctrine dictated that un-baptised babies be buried in unconsecrated ground in unmarked graves. The glories come from the stones and memorials, and many of the stories come from the people he meets, the conversations they strike up and the curious lives they lead. Some of these big places are stunningly beautiful, and the English there often at their most eccentric.