London: City of the Dead

A groundbreaking account of London’s relationship with death, this book covers the afterlife, execution, bodysnatching, murder, fatal disease, spiritualism, bizarre deaths, and cemeteries. Taking the reader from Roman London to the "glorious dead" of World War I, 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 The Executioner’s City 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 colorful 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.