A Tomb With a View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards: Scottish Non-fiction Book of the Year 2021

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But I bet they wouldn’t end up, as Ross does, at one such natural cemetery overlooking the River Dart in Devon on a blustery All Souls’ Day. I became aware of this book when the author, Peter Ross, kindly agreed to take part in our local book festival which of course last year had to be entirely online. An appreciation of lives lived and of the stories within them and a tribute to those whose business is dealing with the dead. Peter Ross speaks most of the time of the big Victorian graveyards and their history, and if you ever went to Edinburgh I guess you visited Greyfriars (best in the rain).

The geographical range goes from the north of Scotland to the south coast of England and west to the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

A quick Google would have corrected that for him but he clearly didn't bother putting the effort in, and that, in a nutshell, is what a lot of the book felt like. I am in two minds of both systems; on the one hand I thoroughly enjoy wandering around cemeteries that have very old burial plots, yet on the other hand, if people continue to wish to be buried, they have to go somewhere.

He includes examples of both the barbaric past (the witch’s grave in Torry Bay) and the barbaric present (the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, the shooting of Lyra McKee in Belfast). It struck me then that every gravestone is a story, and I set out to learn and tell as many as I could. 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.Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome. Norman Robbins, one of Amateur Theatre's most popular authors, wrote his first stage show almost 60 years ago whilst working for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Another story that stands out is that of Shane MacThomais, a cemetery guide at Glasnevin who chose it as the place to quietly end his life. Fascinating stuff – definitely on my tbr list – and I have a Waterstones voucher… (once I work out how to use it online!