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.

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. If you've ever wondered where the sweet hereafter might be, then look no further - Arnold shows us beautifully how even in a city as massive as London, the dead never really leave us. Filled with beautiful details, such as the reason we wear black to funerals (Romans believed the colour made mourners invisible to vengeful spirits), and in an optimistic and respectful voice, Arnold brings us a unique history of one of the world's greatest cities - built atop centuries of history and still rising to this day. Arnold marvellously celebrates the possibilities of living in a city as large as London and sensitively demonstrates how much modern citizens owe to their ancestors. Implicitly entwined with the passing of generations is the transformation of an entire population where and how people live, where and how they die, and where their children move on to. London's greatest disasters, including the Great Fire and the Black Plague, are explored and analysed for their massive impacts on both the population and the change in the disposal of the dead, while the unusual resting places of several thousand Londoners are highlighted and studied, as a means of examining growth and city development.

Utilising archaeology, anthropology, anecdote and history, Arnold explores the presence of death in people's lives and the developments and changes in mourning and burial through two millennia.

It's an intriguing, occasionally dark, occasionally humorous journey that reaches right back to the Romans and concludes with the most recent display of mass public mourning: Princess Diana's funeral.

But what about beneath it? What of it's history? It's mishaps? It's dead? Catharine Arnold invites us on a gloriously macabre tour - across London's many graveyards, cemeteries and burial plots in a quest to discover whether what has departed can teach us anything about what is to come. A vast, labyrinthine, ever-moving place that shimmers as the jewel of Britain.

Necropolis by Catharine Arnold