For all the agony of grief, it usually has a time limit. As Peter Stanford reveals in this original, engaging book of the dead, graves are visited for an average of only 15 years before falling into neglect.

Stanford noticed this as he took his dog for walks in the cemetery next to his London home. He noticed, too, how little other people used the graveyard for walks, presumably because of an innate fear of death.

Literary Review

May 2013

Categories

Harry Mount

Instead of a Book

Playing Away

Lava Palaver

Making Yourself At Home

Court Lore

Kindled Spirits

‘Gay But Not Screaming’

Set In Stone?

Roundly Acknowledged

Oh What A Lovely Pile

Delusions of Originality

It Came, It Saw, It Conquered

Those Irritating Lefties

Why Ask If Shad Do It?

TV’s Socrates

Slumming It

Keeping Out the Joneses

Alphabet Soup

Sublime to the Ridiculous

Stateside Sniping