A Tomb With a View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards: Scottish Non-fiction Book of the Year 2021

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He moves along a non-linear path, from accounts of loneliness and mental illness to encounters with religious tension – including the burial of murdered Irish journalist Lyra McKee. Peter Ross converses on the way with those who have chosen different ways to bury their loved ones and celebrate them , which gives me at least some inspiration about my departure! The Royal Botanic Garden had opened nearby just 40 years earlier, but to the promenading mid-Victorians, taking a gentle stroll around a garden of death was a comparable attraction.

Whilst a potentially fascinating insight, I didn't enjoy this book as much as expected as I found Ross' writing style to be rather dry and monotonous. James Joyce and Charles Dickens would’ve loved it - a book that reveals much gravity in the humour and many stories in the graveyard. My daughter and I felt it was okay to look, to read the inscriptions, having before felt this rather intrusive. This is probably due to the fact I’m not from Britain and often didn’t know which places he referred to, but I really wouldn’t know that ‘Crossbones’ is a London graveyard if I hadn’t Googled it whilst reading that chapter. Where our graveyards are cold and unpersonal, these small burial places are very much attached to the village and graves go back hundreds of years.Ian Parsons has spent several years living permanently in Extremadura and now splits his time between his native county of Devon and his beloved vulture landscape, where he leads bird tours introducing people to the birds and the area he clearly loves. Prior to reading this book, I had not pondered that once the idea of resurrection started to be doubted, cremation took off, which caused certain cemeteries to decay.

Books should not be judged by their cover, but I reserve the right to judge them by how they make me feel. With rare exceptions such as bank holidays, the book group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7. Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning journalist Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of Britain's best graveyards.The oldest one is the Glendalough monastic site, but Dublin's Glasnevin and Edinburgh's Greyfriars are the most notable ones I touristed upon. Fascinating these lives may have been – and Ross is right, Hessel’s is a BBC drama series waiting to happen – but they have all reached a full stop. One hundred years after the end of the First World War, men who fought in it are still being buried in Belgium and France, as their bodies are retrieved and identified. Amelia Edwards travelled around Egypt long before it was acceptable for women to travel without male company.