The Undiscovered Country: Journeys Among the Dead
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By Carl Watkins
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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.
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A surprisingly entertertaining, interesting and informative book about beliefs about death, or rather what happens to us after death, between 1400's and 1900's in Britain. As we're taken through the ages and changes in beliefs the author weaves the information into stories about real people and places with such a chatty, witty stlye it's easy to read even though it's quite an academic piece of research by a Cambridge historian. Recommended for anyone who's ever wondered about an afterlife or lack of one.
