A really touching read that is part travelogue, part rumination on death in our culture and part historical review. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a stroll through a cemetery.

Death and griefs are complex things and so is graveyards.
With this book it's not only a history of graveyards but also a picture into different social structures and human interactions with death and graves. What is so compelling about the graves of heroes of the past, that makes people visit them even now, even when the person has been gone for a century or more. This book explore this and so much more. Our attitudes to death and graveyards have changed over the centuries from mass-graves to overly decorated tomb to express or remember the person's life. We all deal with death in different ways we all have our own way that we think is socially acceptable way to deal wit this hard matter.

Peter Standford travels through Europe looking at different grave sites, some that are about the founders and the history of said site, other chapters will discuss the famous person who lived there and some chapters will talk about the religious or the social expectations of dealing with death.

In all it was a interesting book, I did expect it to dig a little deeper into rituals rather than history but I did find it enjoyable. I feel like it in the latter years have become more acceptable to talk about this topic. I did not find the book creepy or macabre, rather it is informative and insightful view of dealing with the end of life and how they did it through history.

Quite interesting to read, learnt a few useful conversational pieces that I shall employ at some stage between now and my death.

This book was good but the order of the chapters threw me a little.

I stumbled across this book while looking for 'Rest in Pieces' Bess Lovejoy and figured I'd give it a go - this is one of those areas I find extremely fascinating and I would love to be Cemetery Warden, living on the grounds, tending to the dead.

I almost applied for 'Crematorium Assistant' at the ONLY Crematorium in Ireland, but it said you had to deal with the bereaved when all I want to do is the make-up and curl hair.

Interesting read but felt more like a history textbook that you have to read at high school.

A book about a sombre subject that I found a joy to read. The book reminded me that cemeteries not only come in different shapes and sizes- as it were- but that they are also places of reflection and interest.

Some lovely facts but they were thin on the ground. I was expecting a lot more nitty gritty of symbolism and meaning, and rather less in the way of meditating on death, which I can do myself. Not a bad book but not an attention-holder I fear.