Today is Book Review Day here at Cryptoworld. Hope you enjoyed the first On the Trail of Ancient Man, this is our second…
It appears to contain almost every myth, legend and ghost story ever told in England…a wonderful dipping book.
The Lore of the Land gathers together the stories, many of them hundreds of years old, that have been passed down from one generation to the next. With each retelling, fact and fiction, tradition and superstition have become ever more interwoven, and these tales have become an integral part of England’s heritage. This magnificent new survey uncovers the real – and imagined – reasons why families such as the Berneys of Reedham and the Lytteltons of Hagley bore a red hand in their coat of arms, it explores the origins of the Cumberland story of the ‘Luck of Edenhall’, and it speculates whether Sweeney Todd, the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, ever really existed. It also sets out to explain why similar stories crop up so frequently in different places – whether accounts of supposedly bottomless lakes, or phantom coaches, or mysterious subterranean passages. And, from all over England, it brings together the legends that surround such figures as Oliver Cromwell, St George and the murderers of Archbishop Thomas Becket.
What’s good about this book is the authors want you to help make the next revision even better…
Most people, when they read a book like this, are reminded of stories they know, about the places they live(d) in. We would love to hear these. Send as much information as you can. It helps us build up background history. We can’t tell a lot from ‘our pub is haunted’ but we can from ‘my grandfather used to say’ especially if you put in your grandads dates.
And if you’ve spotted anything we’ve got wrong please tell me that too.
Jennifer Westwood
