London Review Bookshop Podcasts

In her previous book Strands poet and essayist Jean Sprackland brought lyrically to life the hidden histories of objects found on her local beaches. Now in These Silent Mansions (Jonathan Cape) she brings together a magpie-like collector’s instinct, a historian’s restless curiosity and a poet’s keen sensibility to investigate what graveyards can tell us about both the dead and the living. Revisiting cemeteries in the towns and cities she has over the years called home, she unearths the fascinating, moss-hidden histories of those buried there, and investigates how memory and remembering ties us to the past, the present and the future.Sprackland was in conversation with Chris McCabe, a writer who has travelled extensively through the graveyards of London in books such as Cenotaph South, In the Catacombs and most recently, The East Edge.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.