The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time
The English, Peter Ackroyd tells us, see more ghosts than any other nation. Each region has its own particular spirits, from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Some speak and some are silent, some smell of old leather, others of fragrant thyme. From medieval times to today, stories have been told and apparitions seen - ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace, spooks who just want to have fun. The English Ghost is a treasury of such sightings – which we can believe or not, as we will. The accounts range from the door-slamming, shrieking ghost of Hinton Manor in the 1760s and the moaning child that terrified Wordsworth’s nephew at Cambridge, to the headless bear of Kidderminster, the violent daemon of Devon who tried to strangle a man with his cravat and the modern-day hitchhikers on Blue Bell Hill.
3.1 out of 5 based on 10 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Essays, Journals & Letters |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
288 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
October 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-0701169893 |
| Publisher |
Chatto & Windus |
| |
The English, Peter Ackroyd tells us, see more ghosts than any other nation. Each region has its own particular spirits, from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Some speak and some are silent, some smell of old leather, others of fragrant thyme. From medieval times to today, stories have been told and apparitions seen - ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace, spooks who just want to have fun. The English Ghost is a treasury of such sightings – which we can believe or not, as we will. The accounts range from the door-slamming, shrieking ghost of Hinton Manor in the 1760s and the moaning child that terrified Wordsworth’s nephew at Cambridge, to the headless bear of Kidderminster, the violent daemon of Devon who tried to strangle a man with his cravat and the modern-day hitchhikers on Blue Bell Hill.
Reviews
The Independent
Roger Clarke
“For its slight air of cluttered laziness, this is a wonderful little book. It's properly old-fashioned and unorthodox, a scrapbook of clues, tittle-tattle, hints and mortal byways – very 17th-century, in fact.”
29/10/2010
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The Literary Review
Andrew Lycett
“Fascinating ... like an edition of Fortean Times for antiquaries. He gathers his tales of spectral visions, naughty poltergeists and things that go bump in the night in a detached manner, offering little comment or explanation. The finished product is similar to an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century collection of anecdotes”
01/10/2010
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The Mail on Sunday
Simon Griffith
“[An] elegant and entertaining miscellany of English ghost stories… Ackroyd's book has its fair share of terrified hauntees and, unless you're a convinced sceptic, there are plenty of scenes that will make the hairs on the back of your neck bristle.”
10/10/2010
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The New Statesman
Rebecca Stott
“Ackroyd's tales of ghosts are all the more touching for the common humanity of the awestricken witnesses - labourers and vicars, nurses and seamstresses - striving to describe the indescribable. Funny, bizarre and frightening by turns, this is a rich and compelling assembly of stories for winter nights.”
04/11/2010
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The Independent on Sunday
Suzi Feay
“The cumulative effect of reading these cases, so matter-of-fact and shorn of literary guile, is unnerving. At the very least, the book records a folk art form, now itself deceased.”
31/10/2010
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Times Literary Supplement
Jonathan Barnes
“Although colourful, attractive in its presentation and designed for the general reader...The English Ghost ought not to be mistaken for a minor work. It represents Ackroyd’s latest exploration of interests that have dominated his professional life: the weird, promiscuous mingling of present, past and future which he perceives to be threaded through human existence.”
27/10/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Sinclair McKay
“The accounts themselves are shorn of any attempt to make the flesh creep. They stand alone, inviting the reader to frame his or her own responses.”
26/10/2010
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The Sunday Times
Edward King
“The occasional story is saved by unintentional humour, usually in the form of comic understatement, but the collection could have done with a firmer guiding hand and much greater panache … The killer blow, though, is the leaden dullness of the majority of the tales.”
24/10/2010
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The Spectator
Susan Hill
“...one expects a good deal more from The English Ghost than from any of those other popular titles on the same subject. One does not get it... No novelist could get away with producing stories with so little interest or point, and which are not even particularly frightening.”
09/10/2010
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The Daily Mail
Peter Lewis
“Ackroyd’s book is a considerable disappointment to anyone with real interest in the subject. His input seems negligible, his reflections commonplace. In short, this is a lazy piece of Halloween publishing, exploiting Ackroyd’s name but not his talent. It can only undermine his reputation, already looking, after 30 books, a little bloated.”
28/10/2010
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