Graveyards: A history of living with the dead

Speaker: Roger Luckhurst

Why, how and where do we inter our dead? How have people throughout history responded to the problem of laying their dead to rest?

Join Roger Luckhurst, author of Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead, for an unforgettable tour of the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave - from the pyramids of Giza and the catacombs and columbaria of Rome to the cenotaphs erected to the world’s war dead. Along the way, discover the diverse role of graveyards in literature, art, film and television.
Roger’s wonderfully illustrated cultural history of graves and graveyards will cover topics ranging from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs to grave robbing, garden cemeteries, the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead and the emergence of modern funerary culture.

Exploring the cultural afterlives of burial and memorial sites in the popular imagination, he will show how graves have served as guides to the underworld, poignant dedications to those we have lost, as reminders of our own mortality and settings in gothic horror.

Book sales

You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.

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