Yes, burial grounds of all kinds from the vast Victorian cemeteries of London, those great gardens o 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. 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.

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. 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. The eulogy for "the best-known guide at the most famous cemetery in Ireland" nearly brought me to tears. In between, he highlights some remarkable individual stories, such as the life story of Shane MacThomàis, who committed suicide in his beloved Glasnevin Cemetery. These days, it’s the people who hang around graveyards, who openly talk about death, who are intrigued by our attitudes to it, who are the real oddities.Ross takes us from Flanders Fields to the Victorian garden cemeteries to the divided cemeteries of Belfast and strange ossuaries in Rothwell and Hythe. 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! 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 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. From the path alongside the River Lune he took footpaths and byways across Lancaster and Morecambe to link up two small cemeteries and a crematorium.

After this period has lapsed people can chose to renew this period but if the bill is not paid, a grave will be cleared and made available to a new person. 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. Since the start of the pandemic many of us have been discovering new spaces within a familiar city or town-scape. Quite a lot, as it happens, because there is always a lot more to say about death, especially in an age like ours which tries to block it out with an ocean of trivia. Cemeteries have long been a focus for visits to the famous but – thanks to knowledgeable guides – the obscure or less famous are now also visited.He is accompanying former Sinn Fein spokesman Danny Morrison, who points out each place someone was killed by the British Army as they pass by.

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. When I walk into town I always walk through the graveyard (as do most folk where I live) – as it avoids walking along the main road. It is not always about the place, sometime it is about the ritual and respect that the dead deserves.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. We found families, children, people from the 1700s who we were surprised to find had lived to their late 70's. It is full of absolutely fascinating stories from various graveyards big and small around Britain, Ireland and beyond, in cities and towns, on tiny islands and even on mountain tops. 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. 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.

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.

Enter a grave new world in this acclaimed book as Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. 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. 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. 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. 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.