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Necropolis: London and Its Dead | 
 enlarge | Author: Catharine Arnold
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.84
You Save: $6.11 (41%)
New (24) Used (5) from $8.84
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 417318
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 1416502483
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9781416502487
ASIN: 1416502483
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
London is a city literally built upon its dead: the Houses of Parliament sit on the edge of a former plague pit, and subway tunnels were driven through forgotten catacombs thick with bones. Utilizing archaeology, anthropology, anecdote, and history, this gloriously macabre tour explores the presence of death in Londoners' lives and the changes in burial rites through two millennia of English history. The city’s greatest disasters—including the Great Fire and the Black Plague—are analyzed in regards to their massive impacts on the living and the dead, while the resting places of several thousand Londoners are highlighted as a means of examining population growth and city development. Implicitly entwined with the passing of generations is the transformation of an entire population; death effects how and where future generations live. From Roman burial ceremonies to the more recent passing of Princess Diana, this unique history leaves no headstone unturned.
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| Customer Reviews:
With faint praise. July 29, 2008
I wasn't expecting an awful lot when I picked this book up. As a result of some research on American mourning customs and memento mori that I did as a graduate student, I have some claim to geekery around the history of death. Just from the size of the book and the way that it was marketed, I expected this to be a light history with a focus on the London graveyards. I had hoped, perhaps, for some new anecdotes to add to my cocktail party arsenal.
I got more or less what I expected. Unfortunately, I already knew enough about the subject that there weren't very many new anecdotes. Even more unfortunately, I knew enough to find Arnold a bit... I'm not sure-- either gullible or disingenuous come to mind. She repeats "facts" about the life of the people living in the periods that she covers that I am inclined to believe are no such thing. To be fair, Arnold is not a historian and also does not claim to be one. She is a well-read enthusiast and, I think, a psychologist. For that, and if you don't expect too much, then she doesn't do a bad job.
I also had to quarrel with the structure of the book. Arnold evidently found not enough material in her chosen subject to execute a proper book. Instead of sticking to the cemeteries, the narration wanders off into a variety of semi-related topics. Lives of famous dead people buried in London, the Blitz, the Death of Diana. This is too bad, and annoyed me even when I was learning things.
As I said, if you are interested in the kind of history book which is about anecdote rather than a theme, then this should be a good enough read. I can imagine that it would be good as a ghoulish airplane book, or for someone with a basic interest in the subject at hand. Arnold does provide a useful reference list for further reading.
Could have been more lively July 20, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A well researched presentation of burial rites in the city London since earliest known times to the very present, including medieval London facing the same problem that Catholic cities everywhere faced with the desire to preserve the body for Judgment Day and to bury the corpse in a churchyard, coupled with practically no common sense about health and hygiene, struggling to find room for the dead in the land of the living.
An interesting book without being too ghoulish or gory; there are plenty of anecdotes. One wishes that, instead of just giving the bare bones of some stories, the author had spent a little more time fleshing them out, such as she did with the affect of massive deaths in the World Wars and from the plaque. There is a very well done section on Victorian funeral attitudes and the creation of the undertaking business, including how attitudes on grief had changed coming up to the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
More drawings, lithos or photos would have been interesting.
Written by a Brit for Brits, there are some references to figures of the past that may be unknown to the American reader, but nothing that bogs the presentation.
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