Description
Book SynopsisOne 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.
Trade Review"Beguiling…
Shadowlands is not just a travelogue of scenic obsolescence. En route, the book offers us a gripping overview of humankind’s seemingly unstoppable evolution from primitive but harmless nomad to the rapacious bureaucrat in charge of civic planning in your neighborhood today." -- Elizabeth Lowry - Wall Street Journal
"[Green] visits eight ruined British settlements…[S]uch lost places are not mere historical curios…they provide cautionary tales about sustainability." -- The New Yorker
"In Matthew Green's
Shadowlands, ruins offer a bittersweet therapy. They confer perspective on Green’s distress…and he becomes obsessed, even comforted, by absence itself, by failure…[An] arresting book." -- Colin Thubron - New York Review of Books
"If you told me that British historian Matthew Green was some kind of delightful English Calvino who’d conjured up an odd fictional encyclopedia of disappeared cities, lost towns, and ghostly villages, I’d still want to read this book…[I]t is worth spending a little time with history’s stark examples of time’s dominion over us all." -- Jonny Diamond - Literary Hub
"Through these slices of British history, Green has woven a moving exploration of impermanence, memory, and the hypnotic allure of the past." -- Sara Shreve - Library Journal (starred review)
"Full of evocative imagery and fascinating lore, this vibrant account eulogizes the past and issues a stark warning for the future." -- Publishers Weekly
"
Shadowlands is so well researched, beautifully written, and packed with interesting detail. Matthew Green is both historian and prophet, offering a warning we need to pay attention to.… Alarming and valuable." -- Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life
"Superb. A beautifully written atlas of Ghost Britain, a summoning of places lost to memory, and a deft excavation of the void underlying myths of national identity." -- William Atkins, author of The Immeasurable World
"A haunting, lyrical tour around the lost places of Britain." -- Charlotte Higgins, author of Under Another Sky
"An exquisitely written, moving, and elegiac exploration of the dead ends and lost causes of history—a book to savor and cherish." -- Suzannah Lipscomb, author of The King Is Dead: The Last Will and Testament of Henry VIII
"A beautiful book, truly original.
Shadowlands is poetic history written with great literary flair, inqusitiveness, soul-searching and humanity…It is a marvelous achievement." -- Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England
"A haunting work of resurrection, stinging in a perpetual present. Shamanic consciousness for the borderlands of memory." -- Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London
