Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain

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He highlights in sharp and solid text what is left of places, such as the astounding remains of Skara Brae on the island of Mainland in the Orkneys.

Shadowlands by Dr Matthew Green | Waterstones Shadowlands by Dr Matthew Green | Waterstones

This dedicated author transfers his many investigations and important pieces of knowledge about our forefathers into a book of huge significance, which is nevertheless easily understood and massively readable. Who can read of the filling of that hated artificial lake, when the roar of millions of gallons of water drowned out “the rousing tones of ‘Land of My Fathers’ in a monstrous, obliterative gush”, without a stirring of the soul? There’s such a huge current appetite for ‘lost’ everything in this country - London rivers, landscapes (Doggerland et al), rewilding, urban exploration - and it’s not hard to understand why, given climate change, Brexit, war, plagues, a sense of a world out of control, and loss of connection with what little nature is left, and historical fabric disappearing as well. It is not known why it was abandoned and is still being investigated, but it has already brought forth masses of important information previously not known. I noticed that, while he look a largely objective view, he occasionally became slightly opinionated, particularly with his view about how we should ensure that settlements stop disappearing; his conclusion mentions the devastating effects in some places of the Coronavirus pandemic, including public houses that never reopened.The publication of a lurid newspaper interview in which the leader of the Free Wales Army says his organisation fully intends to prevent the opening of Llyn Celyn. Shadowlands sets out to show, in Matthew’s words, how our country’s history is “shaped by absences”. Its tower collapsed into the sea, together with the cliff on which it was built, in 1922, “amid a waterfall of dead men’s bones on to the beach below”. On the Cornish coast, a vessel from Cardiff was wrecked with the loss of all ten hands; a brig bound from Sydney to London vanished somewhere off the coast of Ramsgate, the first sign of it, the next morning, a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald floating across the waves; and off the Irish coast at Kilkee, a ship containing five hundred people off to start a new life in New York foundered in the darkness, the grinding and cracking of the hull against the Black Rock a terrible accompaniment to the shrieks and groans of the 96 who drowned, the blood from their battered heads and limbs swirling into the icy sea, corpses found floating the next day in only their nightclothes. It would be the beginnings of a series of journeys that would take him from the wonderfully named Winchelsea to the bleak Scottish islands that are battered by the Atlantic, to the mountains of Wales where a village was deliberately drowned to provide an English city with water.

Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain eBook : Green Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain eBook : Green

The oldest of the abandoned places that Green explores, Skara Brae is at a comfortable remove of millennia from us. This is a fascinating series of stories about rediscovering Britain’s lost past by recounting the discovery of vanished villages, towns, and cities throughout the British Isles. I skimmed through the first chapter on Skara Brae, there felt like too much speculation and guesswork.They can be both fascinating and beguiling, but only if we are at a temporal or emotional distance from the destructive forces that brought them into being. These sites tell stories of climate change; monumental shifts in ways of living; of war and conquest; devastating plague; and rumours of hellfire. With thanks to the publishers and the author, and to NetGalley for providing an e-ARC of this title to read and review. Here she catered for the many male Establishment figures who liked nothing more than popping round for a good flogging.