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Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages
by
57/99
Critics
42/99
Readers
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Scholars
37/99
Rating
77/99
Volume
28/99
Rating
55/99
Volume
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About This Book
Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff. This is the extraordinary tale of Britain's eerie and remarkable ghost towns and villages; shadowlands that once hummed with life. Peering through the cracks of history, we find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a cliff by sea storms; the abandoned village of Wharram Percy, wiped out by the Black Death; the lost city of Trellech unearthed by moles in 2002; and a Norfolk village zombified by the military and turned into a Nazi, Soviet, and Afghan village for training. Matthew Green, a British historian and broadcaster, tells the astonishing tales of the rise and demise of these places, animating the people who lived, worked, dreamed, and died there. Traveling across Britain to explore their haunting and often-beautiful remains, Green transports the reader to these lost towns and cities 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 as they are mourned by evictees and reimagined by artists, writers, and mavericks. A stunning and original excavation of Britain's untold history, Shadowlands gives us a truer sense of the progress and ravages of time, in a moment when many of our own settlements are threatened as never before.
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Reviews
"In each case, Green evokes the deep loss felt by the displaced as livelihoods, traditions, and cultures disappeared along with the communities that supported them ..."
"As Green's book so eloquently shows, people are drawn to these places because they are poignant reminders of the transitory nature of our own much-loved homes and communities."
"In reminding us of the loss of once-thriving communities such as Dunwich and Winchelsea, Green also offers an urgent reminder of what may lie ahead as a result of climate change and rising sea levels."
"If the project is to resurrect Britain's lost places, then lapses like these can only send them back to the bottom of the reservoir."
"The story of St Kilda, the remote Scottish island finally evacuated by its cliff-scrambling, fulmar-eating inhabitants in 1930, has been extensively covered."
"As much as possible, Green puts readers in touch with these sites and their special cultures, now all forsaken."
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