Shadowlands by Matthew Green

Shadowlands by Matthew Green

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2022

A "brilliant London historian" (BBC Radio) tells the story of Britain as never before--through its abandoned villages and towns.

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.

"A beautifully written, intelligent book, and it is offered as a warning as well as a memorial" -- James McConnachie - Sunday Times
"An eloquent tour of lost communities . . . [Green] disinters their rich history and reimagines the lives of those who walked their streets . . . By doing so, he makes tangible the tragedy of their loss and the threat we all face from the climate crisis. " -- P.D. Smith - Guardian
"Fascinating . . . [A] sobering reminder of earthly transience . . . Shadowlands is a well-researched, highly readable history whose deepest import may be premonitory." -- Nat Segnit - Times Literary Supplement
"Startling... Often playful in tone, Shadowlands nonetheless has a serious purpose... [It] offers an urgent reminder of what may lie ahead as a result of climate change and rising sea levels." -- Miranda Seymour - Financial Times
"Consistently interesting [and] thought-provoking . . . Green’s passion and historical vision bursts from the page, summoning up the past in surround sound and sensual prose." -- Cal Flyn - The Times

Matthew Green is a historian and broadcaster with a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He writes for national newspapers, has appeared in many television documentaries, and is the author of London: A Travel Guide Through Time. He lives in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780393635348
ISBN 10	0393635341
Title	Shadowlands
Author	Matthew Green
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	2022-07-19
Number of pages	368
Prizes	Short-listed for James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2022
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.