Shadowlands

Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain

History , British History
Paperback Published on: 06/04/2023
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Bookseller Reviews

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Shadowlands
The impermanence of all things.
This is a fascinating book, very well written. Dealing with a wide variety of locations, all of them either deserted or simply vanished, the sense of trans... READ MORE
Sean Farrell
Shadowlands
Fascinating
This book was a wonderful exploration of lost places and their demise. Poignant and interesting. Green has a great way of explaining things that never feel... READ MORE
Lucy at Barnstaple

Synopsis

Shortlisted for The James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2022

Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff.

This is the forgotten history of Britain's lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages: our shadowlands.

Britain's landscape is scarred with haunting and romantic remains; these shadowlands that were once filled with life are now just spectral echoes. Peering through the cracks of history, we find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a Suffolk cliff by sea storms; the lost city of Trellech unearthed by moles in the Welsh Marches; and the ghostly reservoir that is Capel Celyn, one of the few remaining solely Welsh-speaking villages, drowned by Liverpool City Council.

Historian Matthew Green tells the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate and probes the disappearances to explain why Britain looks the way it does today. Travelling across Britain, Green transports the reader to these places as they teeter on the brink of oblivion, vividly capturing the sounds of the sea clawing away row upon row of houses, the taste of medieval wine, or the sights of puffin hunting on the tallest cliffs in the country. We experience them in their prime, look on at their destruction and revisit their lingering remains later as they are mourned by evictees and reimagined by artists, writers and mavericks.

By exploring the lost causes and dead ends of history - places lost to natural phenomena, war and plague, economic shifts and technological progress - the precariousness of our own towns and cities, of humanity, becomes clear. Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly original account of Britain's past. 'A haunting and miraculous work of resurrection, stinging in a perpetual present'.

  • Publisher: Faber & Faber
  • ISBN: 9780571338030
  • Number of pages: 368
  • Weight: 300g
  • Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 25 mm

Customer Reviews

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Shadowlands
Badly written. Strewn with errors.
What on the face of it should be a fascinating approach to British history is unfortunately let down by poor writing and just plain errors. The writing is ... READ MORE
Malcolm Powers