Download or read book Necropolis written by Catharine Arnold and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-10-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the development of cremation and the current approach of metropolitan society towards death and bereavement -- including more recent trends to displays of collective grief and the cult of mourning, such as that surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales -- NECROPOLIS: LONDON AND ITS DEAD offers a vivid historical narrative of this great city's attitude to going the way of all flesh. As layer upon layer of London soil reveals burials from pre-historic and medieval times, the city is revealed as one giant grave, filled with the remains of previous eras -- pagan, Roman, medieval, Victorian. This fascinating blend of archaeology, architecture and anecdote includes such phenomena as the rise of the undertaking trade and the pageantry of state funerals; public executions and bodysnatching. Ghoulishly entertaining and full of fascinating nuggets of information, Necropolis leaves no headstone unturned in its exploration of our changing attitudes to the deceased among us. Both anecdotal history and cultural commentary, Necropolis will take its place alongside classics of the city such as Peter Ackroyd's LONDON.

Download or read book The Quantity Theory of Insanity written by Will Self and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fictional world of Will Self is unlike any other. In The Quantity Theory of Insanity, we learn, amongst other things, the dark and terrible secret of Ward 9, why you are right to think that London is full of dead people and that each and every human being is caught up in a colossal balancing act between the sane and the insane ... The Quantity Theory of Insanity is acerbic, satirical, hilarious and, most of all, utterly unique in imaginative vision.

Download or read book This is London written by Ben Judah and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is London in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers, witch-doctors and sex workers. This is London in the voices of Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians. This is London as you've never seen it before. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction 2016 Shortlisted for the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage 2019 'An eye-opening investigation into the hidden immigrant life of the city' Sunday Times 'Full of nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others . . . It recalls the journalism of Orwell' Financial Times 'Ben Judah grabs hold of London and shakes out its secrets' The Economist

Download or read book Death Comes to London written by Catherine Lloyd and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A season in London promises a welcome change of pace for two friends from the village of Kurland St. Mary--until murder makes a debut. . . With the reluctant blessings of their father, the rector of Kurland St. Mary, Lucy Harrington and her sister Anna leave home for a social season in London. At the same time, Lucy's special friend Major Robert Kurland is summoned to the city to accept a baronetcy for his wartime heroism. Amidst the dizzying whirl of balls and formal dinners, the focus shifts from mixing and matchmaking to murder when the dowager Countess of Broughton, the mother of an old army friend of Robert, drops dead. When it's revealed she's been poisoned, Robert's former betrothed, Miss Chingford, is accused, and she in turn points a finger at Anna. To protect her sister, Lucy enlists Robert's aid in drawing out the true culprit. But with suspects ranging from resentful rivals and embittered family members to the toast of the ton, it will take all their sleuthing skills to unmask the poisoner before more trouble is stirred up. . . Praise for Death Comes to the Village "[A] delightful debut. . .Readers will hope death returns soon to Kurland St. Mary." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Lloyd combines a satisfying mystery with plenty of wit and character development." --Booklist

Download or read book Death in the Air written by Kate Winkler Dawson and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes. All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left. The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows? The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

Download or read book The Black Death in London written by Barnie Sloane and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death of 1348–49 may have killed more than 50% of the European population. This book examines the impact of this appalling disaster on England's most populous city, London. Using previously untapped documentary sources alongside archaeological evidence, a remarkably detailed picture emerges of the arrival, duration and public response to this epidemic and subsequent fourteenth-century outbreaks. Wills and civic and royal administration documents provide clear evidence of the speed and severity of the plague, of how victims, many named, made preparations for their heirs and families, and of the immediate social changes that the aftermath brought. The traditional story of the timing and arrival of the plague is challenged and the mortality rate is revised up to 50%–60% in the first outbreak, with a population decline of 40–45% across Edward III's reign. Overall, The Black Death in London provides as detailed a story as it is possible to tell of the impact of the plague on a major mediaeval English city.

Download or read book Death Message written by Kate London and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOK 2 OF THE TOWER - NOW A MAJOR ITV DRAMA 'Sensational... A brilliant, high-octane crime novel' Tony Parsons October 1987: the morning after the Great Storm. Fifteen-year-old Tania Mills walks out her front door and disappears. Twenty-seven years later her mother still prays for her return. DS Sarah Collins in the Met's Homicide Command is determined to find out what happened, but is soon pulled into a shocking new case and must once again work with a troubled young police officer from her past, Lizzie Griffiths. PC Lizzie Griffiths, now a trainee detective, is working in the Domestic Violence Unit, known by cops as the 'murder prevention squad'. Called to an incident of domestic violence, she encounters a vicious, volatile man - and a woman too frightened to ask for help. Soon Lizzie finds herself drawn into the centre of the investigation as she fights to protect a mother and daughter in peril. As both cases unfold, Sarah and Lizzie must survive the dangerous territory where love and violence meet.

Download or read book Corrupt Bodies written by Kris Hollington and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA'S ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION ** In 1985, Peter Everett landed the job as Superintendent of Southwark Mortuary. In just six years he'd gone from lowly assistant to running the UK's busiest murder morgue. He couldn't believe his luck. What he didn't know was that Southwark, operating in near-Victorian conditions, was a hotbed of corruption. Attendants stole from the dead, funeral homes paid bribes, and there was a lively trade in stolen body parts and recycled coffins. Set in the fascinating pre-DNA and psychological profiling years of 1985-87, this memoir tells a gripping and gruesome tale, with a unique insight into a world of death most of us don't ever see. Peter managed pathologists, oversaw post mortems and worked alongside Scotland Yard's Murder Squad - including on the case of the serial killer, the Stockwell Strangler. This is a thrilling tale of murder and corruption in the mid-1980s, told with insight and compassion.

Download or read book Still Counting the Dead written by Frances Harrison and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extraordinary book. This dignified, just and unbearable account of the dark heart of Sri Lanka needs to be read by everyone." — Roma Tearne, author of Mosquito The tropical island of Sri Lanka is a paradise for tourists, but in 2009 it became a hell for its Tamil minority, as decades of civil war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax. Caught in the crossfire were hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns, and other civilians. And the government ensured through a strict media blackout that the world was unaware of their suffering. Now, a UN enquiry has called for war crimes investigation, and Frances Harrison, a BBC correspondent for Sri Lanka during the conflict, recounts those crimes for the first time in sobering, shattering detail.

Download or read book London Incognita written by BUDDEN and published by . This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the Shirley Jackson Award shortlisted Judderman. London Incognita chronicles a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two-thousand years of history, as seen through the eyes of its desperate and troubled inhabitants. A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and buildings burn down, the city's selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of London.

Download or read book London City of the Dead written by David Brandon and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London: City of the Dead is a groundbreaking account of London's dealing with death, covering the afterlife, execution, bodysnatching, murder, fatal disease, spiritualism, bizarre deaths and cemeteries. Taking the reader from Roman London to the 'glorious dead' of the First World War, this is the first systematic look at London's culture of death, with analysis of its customs and superstitions, rituals and representations. The authors of the celebrated London: The Executioner's City (Sutton, 2006) weave their way through the streets of London once again, this time combining some of the capital's most curious features, such as London's Necropolis Railway and Brookwood Cemetery, with the culture of death exposed in the works of great writers such as Dickens. The book captures for the first time a side of the city that has always been every bit as fascinating and colourful as other better known aspects of the metropolis. It shows London in all its moods - serious, comic, tragic and heroic-and celebrates its robust acceptance of the only certainty in life.

Download or read book The Way We Die Now written by Seamus O'Mahony and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Seamus O'Mahoney's thoughtful, moving and unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying and made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve.

Download or read book The Black Death and Other Putrid Plagues of London written by Natasha Narayan and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death & other putrid plagues

Download or read book The Enemy written by Charlie Higson and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-01-02 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of a devastating disease, everyone sixteen and older is either dead or a decomposing, brainless creature with a ravenous appetite for flesh. Teens have barricaded themselves in buildings throughout London and venture outside only when they need to scavenge for food. The group of kids living a Waitrose supermarket is beginning to run out of options. When a mysterious traveler arrives and offers them safe haven at Buckingham Palace, they begin a harrowing journey across London. But their fight is far from over???the threat from within the palace is as real as the one outside it. Full of unexpected twists and quick-thinking heroes, The Enemy is a fast-paced, white-knuckle tale of survival in the face of unimaginable horror.

Download or read book Dead Doubles written by Trevor Barnes and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing but true story of one of the most notorious spy cases from the Cold War—and the international manhunt that seized global attention as it revealed the shadowy world of deep cover KGB operatives. The dramatic arrest in London on January 7, 1961 of five Soviet spies made headlines worldwide and had repercussions around the globe. Alerted by the CIA, Britain's security service, MI5, had discovered two British spies stealing invaluable secrets from the highly sensitive submarine research center at Portland, UK. Their controller, Gordon Lonsdale, was a Canadian who frequently visited a middle-aged couple, the Krogers, in their sleepy London suburb. But the seemingly unassuming Krogers were revealed to be deep cover American KGB spies—infamous undercover agents the FBI had been hunting for years—and they were just one part of an extensive network of Soviet operatives in the UK. In the wake of the spies' sensational trial, the FBI uncovered the true identity of the enigmatic Lonsdale—Konon Molody, a Russian who had lived in California before being recruited by the KGB. Molody opened secret talks with MI5 to betray Russia, but before he had the chance, the KGB blackmailed Britain into spy swaps for him and the Krogers. Based on revelatory, newly-released archival material and inside sources from around the world, Dead Doubles follows the hunt for the highly damaging Portland Spy Ring. As gripping as a le Carré novel, this incredible narrative, layered with false identities, deceptions, and betrayal, crisscrosses from the UK to the USSR to the US, Canada, Europe and New Zealand, and brings to life one of the most extraordinary spy stories of the Cold War.

Download or read book The Great Trouble written by Deborah Hopkinson and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The suspenseful tale of two courageous kids and one inquisitive scientist who teamed up to stop an epidemic. “A delightful combination of race-against-the-clock medical mystery and outwit-the-bad-guys adventure.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Eel has troubles of his own: As an orphan and a “mudlark,” he spends his days in the filthy River Thames, searching for bits of things to sell. He’s being hunted by Fisheye Bill Tyler, and a nastier man never walked the streets of London. And he’s got a secret that costs him four precious shillings a week to keep safe. But even for Eel, things aren’t so bad until that fateful August day in 1854—the day the deadly cholera epidemic (“blue death”) comes to Broad Street. Everyone believes that cholera is spread through poisonous air. But one man, Dr. John Snow, has a different theory. As the epidemic surges, it’s up to Eel and his best friend, Florrie, to gather evidence to prove Dr. Snow’s theory—before the entire neighborhood is wiped out. “Hopkinson illuminates a pivotal chapter in the history of public health. . . . Accessible . . . and entertaining.” —School Library Journal, Starred “For [readers] who love suspense, drama, and mystery.” —TIME for Kids

Download or read book Journey Through the Afterlife written by John H. Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from leading scholars and detailed catalog entries that interpret the spells and painted scenes, this fascinating and important work affords a greater understanding of ancient Egyptian belief systems and poignantly reveals the hopes and fears about the world beyond death.