A Tomb With a View: The Stories & Glories of Graveyards

by Peter Ross

Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who are London's outcast dead and why is David Bowie their guardian angel? What is the remarkable truth about Phoebe Hessel, who disguised herself as a man to fight alongside her sweetheart, and went on to live in the reigns of five monarchs? Why is a Bristol cemetery the perfect wedding venue for goths?

All of these sorrowful mysteries - and many more - are answered in A Tomb With A View, a book for anyone who has ever wandered through a field of crooked headstones and wondered about the lives and deaths of those who lie beneath.

So push open the rusting gate, push back the ivy, and take a look inside...

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Death, Travel, Historical, Scotland, Adult

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2020

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are you a taphophile? I definitely am! I’ve always loved wandering around churchyards and cemeteries, reading the headstones and learning about the past. I find them calming places. Once you’re away from the main gates, they’re generally quiet and peaceful, with nothing to be heard but birdsong and the wind in the trees. This book is about so much more than that though.

Peter Ross certainly visits many graveyards, paying homage to those who were famous, or infamous, in their own time but who are largely forgotten now. There is Peter, the Wild Boy, who was found alone in a German forest unable to speak and living by his own wits, it would seem. George I heard of him and brought him over to England where he was feted at court until, growing tired of his inability to communicate and his erratic behaviour, he was sent to work on a farm where he eventually grew old, surrounded by people who cared for him. He visits the grave of Amelia Edwards, a name which means nothing to most of us but without her, none of us might have heard of Flinders Petrie, the great Egyptologist and archaeologist. Amelia Edwards travelled around Egypt long before it was acceptable for women to travel without male company. Appalled by the desecration she saw at ancient sites, on her return she founded the Egypt Exploration Society whose mission it was to fund systematic archaeological excavation so that the ancient culture might be better understood and preserved for future generations. The Society employed Flinders Petrie whom it is said she came to regard almost as a son. She deserves to share his fame.

Ross spends time considering those who die as a result of violence. He visits Belfast and its notorious Milltown Cemetery, talking to those who have buried friends and family there as a result of what is euphemistically always referred to as “The Troubles”. I fought back tears as he learned about cillini (pronounced killeeni), the little burial grounds, usually unmarked, found all over Ireland. In these spots were buried those the Catholic Church would not allow to be buried in consecrated ground such as unbaptised infants, women who died in childbirth, and those who had taken their own lives. Back in England, he investigates what happened to conscientious objectors killed in wartime and travels around northern France with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Every week, First World War casualties are found when farmers dig up their fields or ground is being prepared for building. Such care is taken to resite the remains, to identify them and to then contact living relatives, if any can be found.

This book has so many themes and so many stories. I learned so much history and it left me with so many things to think about. Ross is a thoughtful writer with the knack of using just the right turn of phrase to express himself. Visiting mummified bodies in an Irish crypt, he writes,

They bring to mind wood shavings, wasp nests, dead leaves, dust. They are skin stretched over bone stretched over time. More parchment than person. Autumn made flesh.

I’d give this book 6 stars, if I could. It gave me so much pleasure and will continue to do. Highly recommended for taphophiles!

[K.J. Charles]

A stupid title and a bland beginning disguise an excellent and interesting look at various British and Irish graveyards, and a meditation on death: how we live with it, remember it, interact with or ignore it. Some parts are startlingly moving, others wryly funny. There's lots of interesting history and characters, making this a deeply human and thought-provoking book.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book definitely fed the ever growing taphophile in me. I found this particular gem in the gift shop of Bath Abbey, and it has satisfied the morbid side of my curiosity in every way possible.

I regularly go on outings to my favourite cemeteries, very often taking lots of photos, and I particularly enjoy tracking down famous names in the cemetery, one of which, was Tolkien, who is buried with his wife in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford.

I find it such a peaceful activity walking amongst the headstones, as well as the historical side of things, I believe there is so much beauty to be found in these places.

The book was easy to understand, interesting information about lots of graveyards and I have marked off a few for me to visit in the very near future.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people are spooked by graveyards, but I have never found a graveyard spooky or creepy. They are places where time stands still for those at rest. Words and numbers inscribed into a stone tell so much history too, of people who left early to miss the rush and those that evaded the walk across the black sands for a long time.

Uncovering those histories has been something that has captivated Peter Ross and in A Tomb With a View, he finds the stories of the people who inhabit graveyards and the people that still care about them. His journey will take him from the natural burial site of Sharpham Meadow in Devon where he meets Bridgitt and the resting place of her late husband Wayne where she is picking leaves off the discreet stone with his name on.

In Dublin, he goes to the graveyard of Glasnevin to discover its history. It was first known as Prospect Cemetery and the tragic tale of Shane MacThomáis who once told the stories of the people within its walls and took his own life on a tree in the grounds. He is now with his late father in the same plot. Getting married in a graveyard would probably be too much for some people, but for Liz and Shawn, it was the perfect place for a Halloween wedding.

It is not always about the place, sometime it is about the ritual and respect that the dead deserves. Death has been banished to a certain extent, gone are the days when the children in villages would want to see the recently deceased and all trooping up to the bedroom to pay those last respects. Ritual is important to those with faith too, and Ross spends time with a Muslim funeral director who has to collect a prepare a body for burial the following day so the soul can move on.

“Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’
Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘… Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

I thought that this was a really good book about how we as a modern society are coping with death and how it differs to the way that we treated the dead in the past. It is not morbid or grim to read, rather it has a strong narrative and is sensitively written about those that have departed but not left us. I am slightly surprised that he didn’t go to Brookwood Cemetery, the enormous place of rest just outside Woking; it is quite awe-inspiring walking around there; it does get a mention though. Well worth reading.

[John Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immensely readable. Snooping round cemeteries and churchyards has been a preoccupation of mine throughout my life, even as a kid. With this book I encounter a fellow traveller, a real professional, who approaches it from so many angles. Travelling with him has been great. There are some very good photographs throughout the text. My only criticism is that they come without any explanatory text. In some cases it’s obvious but in others less so. Excellent index.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly brilliant and beautiful - it is more then a book about cemeteries - it is about death and our response to it and it is most definitely more then a mawkish contemplation of the excesses of Victorian burial habits - Peter Ross is no starry-eyed nostalgists for the days of horse drawn funeral carriages, black plumes, bombazine, crepe and child mutes - he is a man who can look at difficult realities with an honest and fair approach that I could not match (I am thinking here of his account of Milltown cemetery in Belfast which I admired so much because I would never have been able to conceal my loathing).

Although I had thought that there was nothing further I could learn to loath about the Catholic Church (and I say that as a catholic born and educated) Mr. Ross has provided me with knowledge I didn't want but I am grateful for about the Cillini of Ireland - the places were until very recently in some places those who were not allowed in consecrated churchyards, including the mentally disabled, suicides, beggars, executed criminals, and shipwreck victims were placed but the vast majority were infants who died before baptism and were banned from heaven and sent to 'Limbo', a place which the Catholic Church has now decided doesn't exist. Mr. Ross writes beautifully about these places and there rediscovery and reintegration into communities.

His account of Cross Bones in Southwark, London, is equally fine (if you know nothing about Cross Bones then I leave you to research it, or even better, read this book) and thought provoking, as are all of his varied essays on cemeteries throughout the the UK and Ireland and though I find the stories of outcasts more immediately appealing his accounts of more historic and grandiose resting places are equally good. But overall it is the way he looks at these cemeteries as once more parts of communities and as places we visit that is what makes his book so much more - it is hard to believe that barely a decade or two ago, most of the grand Victorian necropolis's, including Highgate, were largely no-go areas, ruinous, filthy, the haunt of drug addicts and the homeless. That the homeless were simply displaced, not helped is another story.

A fascinating and brilliant book, so unexpected and so life affirming - if that is not contradictory in a book about the dead.

[Mary Picken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Peter Ross’s work and of his writing in particular. He is a writer who loves to seek out human stories, especially those that are warm and full of life and hope. He has always struck me as a journalist whose interest is in finding thre joy in life. A Tomb with a View is a perfect illustration of that. It is beautifully written, full of humanity and his great stories are told with understated flair.

Peter Ross spent some considerable time travelling across Britain and Ireland wandering round graveyards, talking to those who visit them, those who work in them, going on tours and gathering stories as he went.

In his introduction, Ross talks movingly about the book in the context of the Covid pandemic. Not just of lives lost, but of graveyards as a place of solace and a place to retreat to when parks became so crowded as to mitigate against social distancing. He tells us ‘ The coronavirus outbreak intensified this feeling I have that we are always in the company of the dead; that the outstretched palm is only a handspan away’. Ross is naturally empathetic. Here you will not find the hard edge of the journalist, humanity hidden under a veneer of cynicism. His curiosity and interest in people shines through; you feel he really does want to know as much as is possible about the lives of the people who are buried in our cemeteries and what befell them. And such stories there are a plenty! From the women from Wigtown who were tied to stakes and drowned for refusing to give up their Protestant faith to Hannah Twinnoy, who lies in a grave in Malmesbury Abbey and who became the first person in England to be killed by a tiger.

He spends time with Sheldon Goodman, the founder of Cemetery Club, which offers tours of London’s burial grounds, including one, Queerly Departed, a tour of Brompton Cemetery exploring the history of gay and lesbian Londoners buried there.

But what really interests Ross are the small stories, tales he says, that are everywhere ‘lying beneath the moss and leaves’. Tales like Douglas Crosby of Dundrennan, who died aged 7, it is said of a broken heart. A remarkable story that, whether true or not, still lingers.

Saddest, I found, are the forgotten graves. Those in York, on a patch of grass between two busy roads which house cholera victims from an outbreak in 1832, or the ‘Navvies’ Graveyard which marks the graves of 37 unnamed Irish workers who died of typhus in 1847 while building the Caledonian Railway.

There are touching stories too, a love story of a couple who lived for 80 years and had 12 children and who died within hours of each other; one could not exist without the other.

So many stories, from Muslim burials by Britain’s oldest firm of Muslim funeral directors to grand monuments, from Whitby Goths to tiny unmarked graves; each has a story and Ross accords each with the same degree of care and interest. There’s humour and there is also profound sadness.

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. Ross also speaks to Mohamed Omer of the hugely difficult task he had of dealing with the profound bereavement of relatives of the Grenfell fire – a bereavement made so much more difficult because the bodies could not be buried for some considerable time. The pain of such deaths hangs heavy in the air.

Don’t though, take the impression that this is a gloomy or depressing book. It is quite the contrary. It is very much a celebration of the lives it contains. An appreciation of lives lived and of the stories within them and a tribute to those whose business is dealing with the dead.

Ross’s journey takes him to all manner of places, but perhaps the one that speaks to us today is the most contemporary. Sharpham Meadow is a natural burial ground by Totnes in Devon. A secular place, with slate stones for markers, it is a place of calm and beauty where the bodies of those gone are put into the earth to become part of it. Bridget has buried Wayne there and often visits to chat to him. Ross’s conversation with Wyne’s funeral arrangers is fascinating. The Green Funeral Company offers an alternative path to the traditional funeral directors; one that urges creativity and is elemental in approach. It spoke to me of a way of doing things that felt less rigid and pompous and was for the living as much as the dead.

Verdict: There are so many stories in this book, it is one I will be dipping in and out of for some time. Beautiful prose, and fascinating stories told with compassion and genuine interest. Ultimately, this is a warm and thoughtful book, both intimate and poignant, that stays with you. In the midst of death, Peter Ross bring light and life to a subject that we should all talk more about.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

The synopsis of this book makes it sound much more interesting than it actually was.

These cemetery “tours” didn’t translate successfully into book or audio formats (I did both). Learning about all of the lesser known inhabitants of these graveyards, in a different country no less, just didn’t hold my attention and the author’s monotonous style of writing was less than captivating.

If you enjoy stories that aren’t connected to one another and are told without rhyme or reason, you’ll like this book just fine but might I suggest a guided tour in-person instead?

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

They say that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The good news is - no one mentioned anything about picking a book by one. That's how this publication caught my eye: "The stories and glories of graveyards".

The blurb reads:
"Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who are London's outcast dead and why is David Bowie their guardian angel? What is the remarkable truth about Phoebe Hessel, who disguised herself as a man to fight alongside her sweetheart, and went on to live in the reigns of five monarchs? Why is a Bristol cemetery the perfect wedding venue for goths?

All of these sorrowful mysteries - and many more - are answered in A Tomb With A View, a book for anyone who has ever wandered through a field of crooked headstones and wondered about the lives and deaths of those who lie beneath.

So push open the rusting gate, push back the ivy, and take a look inside..."

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting. Probably something between a spooky tale and a journalistic presentation of facts. What awaited me was so much more than that.

I'm not a huge taphophile. I never had any particular interest in visiting old cemeteries just for the sake of going there. Over the years, I visited a few of them as a part of bigger tours. The oldest one is the Glendalough monastic site, but Dublin's Glasnevin and Edinburgh's Greyfriars are the most notable ones I touristed upon.
I always considered them a place of personal contemplation and grief. As such, it felt more appropriate to leave them undisturbed.

In the comfort of my own home, Peter Ross took me with him on a journey through great urban necropolises, like London's Highgate and Kensal Green or Glasnevin, to a lesser-known tide-hidden resting place of Lilias Adie - a victim of Scottish witchcraft panic from 1704.
Author tactfully interweaves facts about the cemeteries with personal stories hidden behind the names on stones: Kensal Green's Medi Oliver Mehra, Malmesbury Abbey's Hannah Twynnoy, St Nicholas Churchyard's Phoebe Hessel, or Shane MacThomás, whose life, death, and what follows after, is tied to Glasnevin and its history.

Cemeteries are also for the dead and the living alike. Speaking to Highgate's gardener and stonemason, and Haji Taslim Funerals is an intimate glimpse behind the curtain on the everyday life of burials.
Another aspect is that of belonging - to a community or to a place. Like countless residents of Crossbones, participants of the Queerly Departed tour, or WWI fallen - they are not missing; they are here.

Ross' accounts are compelling, but without losing the empathy and tact. Like a good tour guide, he knows there is space for tears, but also for laughter, for grief and for a celebration of life, for grand monuments and for wooden crosses, for defiance and for reconciliation. All told with a hint of nostalgia for the forgotten histories hidden behind names and dates.
The book is also a meditation on a personal approach to mortality, burial customs, and what follows after.

Books should not be judged by their cover, but I reserve the right to judge them by how they make me feel.
A Tomb with a View made me feel anger, grief, and appreciation. It also allowed me to look at the tombstones from a perspective of legacies and remembrance they represent.

-----

You can find more reviews on my blog OfBooksAndCoffee.com

[Loren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Ross's book appears to be a guide to visiting graveyards, its focus often turns toward the people who work in graveyards: gravediggers, tour guides, historians, and even memorial artists. 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. Another favorite is about a modern maker of death masks, whose work appears on three headstones in Highgate Cemetery. The eulogy for "the best-known guide at the most famous cemetery in Ireland" nearly brought me to tears. Several of the bloggers and tour guides I've discovered online appear here, which I thought was particularly cool.

One caveat, though: neither the cover nor the book's description hints that the book is mostly limited to cemeteries in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It wasn't a problem for me, but is it too much to hope for a continental sequel?

Ross tells the stories of the graveyards and their dead, true, but most of all he conveys how the relationships between the dead and those who remain behind deepen with time. What a lovely, life-affirming book.

[Delphine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant exploration of graveyards and how we treat our dead. Ross takes us from Flanders Fields to the Victorian garden cemeteries to the divided cemeteries of Belfast and strange ossuaries in Rothwell and Hythe. In between, he highlights some remarkable individual stories, such as the life story of Shane MacThomàis, who committed suicide in his beloved Glasnevin Cemetery. He also mentions some new phenomena: the rise of green undertakers (natural burial) and the new orientation of graveyards as marriage avenues.

Ross' approach is heartfelt, deeply emphatic and democratic. An entire chapter is devoted to people who were outcasts in life and death: prostitutes, unbaptized children, people who committed suicide. Death is, after all, quite democratic.

Even though it seems contradictory, this novel is brimming with a love for life. Remembering the dead is key, for then, they become people again, suffused with personality and history, mute vessels for love and longing.

This soothing novel is a real recommendation not just for tapophiles (lovers of graves), but for everyone.

[Sarah Skerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the title and I loved this book. I chose it because I found the title intriguing and because graveyards and tombs have a strange sense of wonder and fascination for many people.
As a child, we would take a shortcut to the shops via the churchyard and I was always told in no uncertain terms not to tread on the graves. I would look at the names, and wonder if those beneath would think kindly or come to find me!

Peter Ross deals with the emotional and practical side of memorials, death, remembrance and causes with sensitivity and care, alongside excellent research. He touches on his own personal reasons only once, and this is enough to understand why he has this interest, and why he is drawn to visiting graveyards and places where those who have passed are remembered.

I particularly found the war graves chapter very touching, and well written, along with the chapter on the woodland/meadow burials.

Since reading this I have taken detours on my afternoon dog walks, walking through the village churchyard, a 13th Century church which has 4 Commonwealth war graves from the First World War and one from the Second. My daughter and I felt it was okay to look, to read the inscriptions, having before felt this rather intrusive. We found families, children, people from the 1700s who we were surprised to find had lived to their late 70's. It's extremely interesting.

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.

With the loss of both my parents, I can see that by visiting these places of memorial we keep those who have passed with us, and we hear their story. That's not macabre, that's positive and hopeful.
This book opened up this thought process fo me, and I am very grateful that I was given the opportunity to review it. It's an excellent book, and I thoroughly recommend it.

[Ever Dundas]

This is such a beautiful book. I thought it might be about the history of graveyards, but it’s so much more than that – it’s really about people, and it’s very much about graveyards as living places (my only criticism: I would have loved non-human animals to feature – possibly the pet cemetery on the edge of London’s Hyde Park, and an exploration of the animals who live and thrive in graveyards).
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. Appreciating graveyards isn’t a morbid preoccupation at all and Ross captures that. I read A Tomb With A View every weekend morning throughout October, sitting on the couch next to my husband, reading bits out to him, and at one point exclaiming (it was during the Cedar chapter - let’s just say I’m very glad we visited Highgate Cemetery when we did). I was moved by many of the stories; Mehdi Mehra’s grand tribute to his son in Kensal Green Cemetery, the outcast dead at Crossbones, the cillini, the brilliant and tenacious Arnos Vale Army… and Marchesa Luisa Casati is definitely my new style icon. There were some funny moments too – an ossuary with a panic alarm in case of goths (tempted to goth it up and visit one day), and a Russian vegetarian unable to handle so many skulls (“I’m not trying to make you eat them, dear!”) When able, I now have many more graveyards to visit across the country and I know because of Ross' book my appreciation will have new depths.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Tomb With a View takes us through graveyards, ossuaries and mortuaries in order to discover what happens after we die both in a physical and spiritual sense. By talking to people from various cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities and religions, Ross delves into a diverse array of outlooks, forms of grief and mysteries surrounding the dead.

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. 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.

An interesting if somewhat disappointing read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Headline for the ARC.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this. If you know me (or have read any of my Violet Veil books) you will probably know my lifelong graveyard obsession. The Graveyard Book was the novel of my dreams, this was the non-fiction of my dreams! I laughed, I cried, I pre-ordered the next one 😆 Simply stunning.

[Iona Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous. Peter Ross's books are all really good and this one is a bit different but also wonderfully written and informative. 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.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really sweet! Sometimes I found getting through it a tiny bit tedious but then I would reach another really profound moment - especially the chapters on Grenfell and natural burial grounds - and I would find myself tearing up. A very tender and ambling book

[Inge · Rating 3 out of 5]

The structure, or lack of it I should say, really bothered me in this book. The chapters seem to be divided by elements on graveyards, like an ankh or angels, but then other chapters had titles like ‘Peter’ (to discuss the live and grave of this Peter) and ‘Skulls’ (to discuss a church with an ossuary). Throughout reading this I wondered what the purpose of this book was, beyond stressing graveyards are ‘fun’. But even this isn’t made explicitly clear. There’s no conclusion, and I’m really not sure what I’m meant to take away from this.

The contents of the chapters themselves also lacked in structure; the author would describe graveyards in Scotland, England, Ireland and Northern Ireland, but never made it clear where he was. 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. 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. This was usually not evenly done, so you’d sometimes read a brief mention about someone but then move on and suddenly read lots of pages about another person. Inbetween this are chats the author had with people visiting these graves. If this was the structure throughout this book it would’ve been a bit confusing, but still fine. However, the other chapters really varied from this. It often felt like the chapters didn’t have anything in common, and were mostly short essays/stories about the author’s experiences at graveyards. Some chapters wouldn’t describe specific graves at all, but focus on special events which take place at graveyards, or research that’s being conducted there. This book therefore read like a stream of consciousness, in which the author described his experiences at different graveyards however he remembered them, and throwing in some fun facts for good measure.

This is such a shame, as there were a lot of interesting fun facts in this. I loved learning that John Knox is now buried underneath a parking lot in Edinburgh, for instance. Going into this I’d hoped I’d learn more about the symbols on gravestones and what they tell us, but this book was more a journalistic overview in which the author visited lots of graveyards and discussed death with people there. A lot of these segments could have been interesting in a publication on death in a more general sense, for instance discussing how we perceive it. Instead this turned into a stream of consciousness about the author and his love of graveyards. The anecdotes were interesting, but they were buried (pun not intended) underneath heaps of often unnecessary details.

[Ophelia Sings · Rating 5 out of 5]

"So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people, all those lives
Where are they now?"

'Cemetry Gates' is my favourite song by by favourite band (the Smiths). As a morose teenager who lived next door to a sprawling Victorian graveyard, the lyrics spoke to me. I would indeed gravely read the ivy-overgrown stones and imagine the lives of those who resided beneath them, creating life stories built around archaic names and centuries-old dates. When I moved to London, naturally I took rooms near to Highgate Cemetery, all the better to swoon over Lizzie Siddal's resting place and follow in the footsteps of crepe-clad mourners. Thanks to Peter Ross's glorious book, I now know that I was - and still am, and forever shall be - a taphophile.

A Tomb With a View is a book about death, but it's also very much a book about life. 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. Being a book about death and graves and all, there is much here that is sad, harrowing even. The cillin - the forgotten graves of unbaptised children in Ireland, rejected by the church, and dug by their bereft parents - and the ultimate fate of many of those lost at Grenfell Tower make for particularly difficult reading.

What is striking and surprising, however, is the way in which a book such as this is also life-affirming. Ross writes about Sharpham Meadow, a natural burial site in Devon, with such warmth that the idea of planning one's own funeral no longer seems like a depressing, macabre act - I too want to be buried in a place that's wild in winter and boskily beautiful come summer with my family carrying me to my eternal rest. The courage and love of the people he speaks to is inspiring and leave the reader with the feeling that death is not something to be feared or hidden, but is very much a part of life.

I'm a bit of a goth so a book like this was always going to appeal to me. But it's a book that everyone should read, regardless of their feelings about the Sisters of Mercy or fishnets. It's absolutely stunning, shimmering with beautiful writing and rich with historic detail - ancient and more modern. It gives those so long forgotten their voices back - the reader can hear the whispers of the lost girls of Crossbones and the skulls of St Leonard's ossuary and it's strangely, unexpectedly, comforting.

A Tomb With a View demystifies death, draws back the veil, and it's utterly beautiful.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Carolyn Lochhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a book about death, Tomb with a View is surprisingly full of life. 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. It might seem an odd premise, but it works wonderfully.

Ross introduces us to characters like Lilias Adie, occupant of the only known witch grave in Scotland, who perished in 1704 after confessing - possibly after being tortured - to sorcery. She was buried beyond the tideline in Fife, and Ross tells her story simply and well.

He does the same with Shane MacThomais, who lies in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, having worked there as a tour guide, sharing his knowledge of and love for the place before taking his own life close to the main gates. Ross brings both MacThomais and Glasnevin to life, delving into his family history and that of the cemetery, artfully interweaving both with tales of Ireland’s wider history.

He deals, too, with traditions of death and how we remember people, exploring Islamic burials, the natural death movement, the impending crisis as our cemeteries reach bursting point and much more, all with a genuine human curiousity and respect.

This could so easily have been a cold and gloomy book, but the secret to its warmth lies in Ross’ writing. His sentences are precisely crafted, and never cliched. It’s genuinely a joy to read his work: I could quite happily have gone straight back to the beginning and started all over again. Wonderful.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A number of times I took customers to the English countryside in spring or summer and how they loved it ! We did pubs and nice little towns like Rye and good food and some Great Houses, but what every time surprised them most was the visit to an English countryside graveyard. And even now, when we talk again about these trips, it is that what every one of them recalls most fondly. 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. True, they are often derelict, overgrown and half collapsed, but also so atmosferic, and not in a spooky way. They let the most talkative of my guests fall silent, and enjoy that silence, and they all talked to me later about the impression it made on them.
So when a good friend gave me this book, I was more than happy ! Peter Ross speaks most of the time of the big Victorian graveyards and their history, and if you ever went to Edinburgh I guess you visited Greyfriars (best in the rain). Some of these big places are stunningly beautiful, and the English there often at their most eccentric. I adore them, quite miss them for the moment, and this book brought it all back. Very well written, well documented and going from the big cities to countryside graveyards and even St Finnan’s Isle, from Kensal Green in London to Belfast, where even in death you are a political statement, and to so many surprising places to rest your weary bones…

[Katedurie50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's very different from Sprackland's spare elegance, less restrained and more sprawling, less elegiac and more full of gusto, sometimes jokey and interested, as a good journalist would be in the varieties of human life and death to be encountered around graveyards. Not that one has to choose between them. This makes many rich connections, for instance between the outcasts of Crossbones in Southwark, and Ireland's incinerated plots for unnoticed babies. Good stuff.

[Magdalena Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, sadly, didn't turn out what I was expecting and anticipating. I love graveyards, visiting them, learning about their history, and so I was really excited to pick up A Tomb with a View. Can we please appreciate a work of art that is its cover? Stunning! Anyway, I enjoyed the first few chapters and then some pages about MR James, but otherwise I found it way too dry, too convoluted and at times too political.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and Headline for the arc of Tomb with a view.

This follows authour Peter Ross in which he goes finds out and ends up uncovering the stories of the graveyard.... Who are London's outcast dead and why is David Bowie their guardian angel? and then What is the remarkable truth about Phoebe Hessel? who ended up disguised and hiding herself as a man to fight alongside her own sweetheart, and then sh went on to live in the reigns of five monarchs? and wierdest thing is Why is a Bristol cemetery the perfect wedding venue for goths..... shocking right

Gloomy and enjoyable read, gripping and read all fast
3 star

[Sharron Joy Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

A journey through the graveyards of the UK and Ireland, exploring the myths, legends and stories surrounding the dearly departed.

This is a book full of heart, of the people who lived and died and loved and lost. It is fascinating and celebratory. There is grief but also joy and love, it is beautifully evocative and historically fascinating.

I have a lifelong fascination with cemeteries and spent my younger years exploring the graveyards where I lived, reading the tombstones wondering about the life of the person in the ground, who they were, how they lived, how they died, so this book was enlightening. It is about the dead but full of life, telling the stories of the inhabitants, in glorious technicolour.

The section on my favourite gothic horror writers, MR James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Amelia Bradley et al, made me so happy, this is a delight and considering the subject, not in any way morbid but rich and beautifully evocative.

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars
I read this in chunks and found truly fascinating. Perfect for anyone that has ever walked through a graveyard and wondered of the stories behind the inscriptions.
The history is brought alive through tales of workers and residents and tradition and rights are detailed and explored. So well written, researched and handled with dignity. A unique reflective book.

[Ampersand · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amount of history and tradition that is in graveyards. It’s shocking to me how far back the history goes in some of them in the UK. This book was put together creatively and smoothly. It was one with much respect and admiration to the people that lived before us, no matter what walk of life they came from.

[Joe Elgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning Memento Mori, If you reach the end and have not questioned your own mortality at least a dozen times then you are already dead. Engaging, enlightening, enthralling and emotional a roller coaster read through our gardens of death.

[Lis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of life and love and hope.

[Moniquilla Guajara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hay capítulos que son tremendamente aburridos.
No me ha terminado de convencer.