The Undiscovered Country: Journeys Among the Dead - Tapa dura

"A first-class study of British attitudes to death and dying from the Middle Ages to the 20th century... A fascinating work of social history that is both scholarly and accessible to general readers" (Financial Times)

"Watkins has a gift for conveying a feeling of place, and is good at conjuring up the dead, lifting the veil so that we can have a peek into the grave and beyond" (Good Book Guide)

"Elegant and constantly fascinating" (The Times)

"Watkins is one of those rare guides who never overstays his welcome. He wears his research lightly as he journeys around the British landscape, teasing out themes and cultural shifts from the particulars of individual lives" (Iain Sinclair Guardian)

"Outstanding ... This may be a book about death but, paradoxically, it is one filled with intelligence and life" (Sunday Times)

We know what happens to the body when we die, but what happens to the soul? The answer may remain a great unknown, but the question has shaped centuries of tradition, folklore and religious belief.

In this vivid history of the macabre, Carl Watkins goes in search of the ancient customs, local characters and compelling tales that illuminate how people over the years have come to terms with our ultimate fate. He discovers what a small Norfolk church has to tell us about the apocalypse; why the greatest minds of the seventeenth century were embroiled in debate over the phantom Drummer of Tedworth; and how a nineteenth-century Welsh Druid completely changed the national view of cremation.

The result is an enthralling journey into Britain’s past, from medieval hauntings on the Yorkshire moors and eccentric memorials on the Cornish coast to séances in Victorian kitchens and gallows tales from a Bristol gaol. Impeccably researched and elegantly told, The Undiscovered Country ventures beyond the veil to bring the dead back to life.