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Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country

Edward Parnell (Goodreads Author)

4.04 · Rating details · 568 ratings · 112 reviews

In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.

In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British I ...more

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Kindle Edition, 468 pages

Published October 17th 2019 by William Collins

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Jan 07, 2020 Bill Kupersmith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction

I thought I was fairly well up on the classical English ghost story, especially as exemplified by M. R. James, but compared to Edward Parnell I am the merest novice. Besides James, I encountered lots of old friends, including Algernon Blackwood and E. F Benson, as well as new acquaintances such as W. H. Hodgson, whose House by the Borderland I may or may not finish. And Robert Aickman sounds most unpleasant. Kipling's They and Marklake Witches (with the touching Philadelphia Bucksteed) were marv ...more

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Jan 13, 2021 Daisy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I read a lot of books. I am an eclectic reader. This book is unlike any I have ever read before encompassing, as it does, biographies of authors, travel writing, natural history, film criticism and memoir. It is a stunningly unique work.
I loved it.
I loved it more than any other book I can remember.
I loved it for the nostalgia it sparked; for the tales of writers who set out to freeze the blood in your veins through fear; for the descriptions of the birds I hope one day to spot, for the descripti ...more

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Mar 18, 2021 Alwynne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, life-writing, writers-critics, supernatural-ish, folkloric

Edward Parnell’s book is a work of memory and an act of remembrance, he opens with his childhood fascination with the ghostly then takes his readers on a tour of the books, films and programmes that have haunted his imagination, tracing their origins through their writers and the places they feature. He goes back to the spaces where authors like M. R. James, Arthur Machen, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper and William Hope Hodgson once lived or wanders the landscapes that inspired their work. He passes ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Blair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, ghosts-and-horror, 2019-release

Edward Parnell's quasi-memoir is a ramble through Britain's ancient, haunted places, with the author touching on various works of horror literature as he attempts to deal with the devastating effects of a series of family deaths. Being a combination of psychogeography, literary criticism, and personal history, it – maybe inevitably – isn't truly satisfying in any of those categories, though it is beautifully crafted. Like most others of its type, Ghostland rarely references anything written or m ...more

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Nov 24, 2019 Joseph rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gothic-and-supernatural, non-fiction

Always the ghosts.

At one point in his Ghostland, Edward Parnell quotes a character from a Walter de la Mare ghost story “Seaton’s Aunt”:

Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don’t even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons.

Ghostland is unclassifiable, a book of many parts. But it is, first and foremost, a book about histories. And like Seaton, Parnell starts with his own history, digging deep into his memory (and in family photo albums) to Always the ghosts.

At one point in his Ghostland, Edward Parnell quotes a character from a Walter de la Mare ghost story “Seaton’s Aunt”:

Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don’t even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons.

Ghostland is unclassifiable, a book of many parts. But it is, first and foremost, a book about histories. And like Seaton, Parnell starts with his own history, digging deep into his memory (and in family photo albums) to piece together the story of growing up with his parents and his brother Chris. There are happy snaps of early family holidays and bird-hunting trips. But, as Edward grows older (and as his story/history progresses) he has to face more harrowing memories of the illness, suffering and death which visit his closest and dearest. One cannot but suspect that Parnell had suppressed many of these bleaker memories and that writing Ghostland was a way in which the ghost of these past images could be summoned and their pain exorcised.

Perhaps it is the very intimacy of this exercise which leads the author to adopt his unusual approach to memoir. Ghostland could easily have became a straightforward autobiography or one of those “true life books” for which there is always a hungry market. Instead, Parnell opts to keep his own history at arm’s length and to use as “interlocutor” with his memories the ghost stories, weird tales and horror movies which he loved so much as a boy and which are still his passion (Parnell himself his written a critically acclaimed ghost novel).

Parnell realizes that these works of fiction are very much shaped by their authors’ own histories and by the landscapes where they were written and set. He sets of on a pilgrimage of the British Isles whose stops are the places which inspired the great writers of ghostly fiction. Readers who share Parnell’s enthusiasm for the genre will find much to enjoy in this regard. M.R. James, Arthur Machen, L.P.Hartley, Charles Dickens, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Aickman, Alan Garner … these are some of the authors whose works (and lives) are discussed in the book. But Parnell’s omnivorous love of the ghostly goes beyond the written word – he also ventures into film and tv, in sections about the folk-horror movies, the cult BBC adaptations of ghost stories at Christmas and even dark public information films from the 1970’s such as “Apaches” and “Lonely Water”.

Ghostland is subtitled “In Search of a Haunted Country” and it often has the feel of a travelogue. Indeed, Parnell exploration of the ghostly and weird is anything but “desk-based”. Whilst the biographical and bibliographical details are well-researched, what gives this book its idiosyncratic feel is the “sense of place” which gives a context to the works discussed. I particularly liked, for instance, the description of Parnell’s impromptu visit to the house in Borth, Wales where William Hope Hodgson penned The House on the Borderland, and his account of revisiting the Norfolk Fens which inspired W.G. Sebald’s autofiction and which Parnell remembers as childhood haunts.

Because, as the author himself admits, it is always the ghosts… These journeys into the uncanny inevitably and repeatedly lead back to the ghosts of Parnell’s past. Invariably, the stations on this idiosyncratic pilgrimage spark personal memories. And as the book nears its end, Parnell must face the terrors of the illness and death of his loved ones. The book is poignant throughout but, in its last chapters, it is emotionally devastating. I cannot start to imagine what challenge it must have been for the author to write the final pages. As readers, we cannot but feel honoured to be allowed to share his most intimate feelings.

For an illustrated version of this review, visit https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20... ...more

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Nov 17, 2019 Susan rated it really liked it

Subtitled, “In Search of a Haunted Country,” this is a moving memoir of family, loss, literature and nature. Author, Edward Parnell, tells of how he was always obsessed by ghosts, as a child. As the book progresses , in a slow, winding, meander, through family history, Parnell muses on his love of ghost stories and early television programmes and films.

This book will certainly make you want to revisit old favourites, as well as discovering new authors. Along the way, he talks of M.R. James, Luc ...more

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Jan 29, 2020 K.J. Charles added it

Shelves: non-fiction, ghost

An odd, unclassifiable mix of memoir, travelogue, lit crit and nature writing. The author travels round the UK to its more haunting (not -ed) locations, places lined with ghost stories, folk horror, Hammer films etc. If you love MR James and Vincent Price this book is for you. It's interspersed with birdwatching and vividly written about the landscapes, both plants and buildings. And there is also the ongoing thread of him writing about personal tragedy: multiple members of his family dying from ...more

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Feb 12, 2021 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite, nonfiction, 2021

jeez louise, SO GOOD -- ticked every reader box I have.

full post is here:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...

Given that I have an intense passion for old ghost stories and weird fiction, it's surprising that I hadn't heard of Ghostland until I started seeing a number of reader reviews of it on Goodreads. It was so highly regarded that I knew I had to read it, and once picked up it was not put down. That's how very good it is. It is all at once a book of psychogeography, a chronicle of famil jeez louise, SO GOOD -- ticked every reader box I have.

full post is here:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...

Given that I have an intense passion for old ghost stories and weird fiction, it's surprising that I hadn't heard of Ghostland until I started seeing a number of reader reviews of it on Goodreads. It was so highly regarded that I knew I had to read it, and once picked up it was not put down. That's how very good it is. It is all at once a book of psychogeography, a chronicle of family, memories, travel, and nature; and at its very heart, a beautiful, moving memoir of grief. And if that isn't enough to whet anyone's appetite, in Ghostland Parnell also treads the ground walked by some of Britain's most famous writers of ghost stories and the weird.
At one point at the beginnng of this book, the author is leaving after a visit to Livemere, childhood home of MR James, thinking about "the final words of James' last published story, 'A Vignette' "

"Are there here and there sequestered places which some curious creatures still frequent, whom once upon a time anybody could see and speak to as they went about on their daily occasions, whereas now only at rare intervals in a series of years does one cross their paths and become aware of them?"

As he makes his way around to explore the locations from the books, movies, television shows and short stories that he enjoyed so much as a boy and then later as a young man, he discusses these works and writes about the authors themselves, recalls childhood memories, and slowly reveals the story of his "phantom family -- a host of lives lived, then unlived" in an attempt to help him "reconcile the real and the half-remembered."

While I won't go into very much here, one of the key ideas that runs through this book is the link between landscape and the work of these writers -- and how awareness of their environment seemed to have been embedded within themselves as much as it has been embedded in their writing. There are more than mere traces to be found in, as the back-cover blurb notes, "the ancient stones, stark shores and folkloric woodlands of Britain's spectered isle," as well as the inland waterways (and I'm so happy he mentioned Elizabeth Jane Howard's "Three Miles Up" which is one of the most frightening stories I've ever read -- and beware, the film version is not quite the same), graveyards, and more, including the stone rings, hills, and other features found in Arthur Machen's work, or Ithell Colquhoun's wild Cornwall, to mention only a few of the many places he visits. But landscape, nature and place also have personal connections for Mr. Parnell -- they evoke memories of family, which he can now remember not in terms of "disquiet" but rather as "reassuring." His journey is related here much along the same lines as W.G. Sebald's Suffolk journey chronicled in The Rings of Saturn (another recent, excellent read) down to the photos embedded within the text.

It is one of the most beautiful books I've read, a poignant way in which the author finds a way to try to express "what is haunting him," as well as a way in which to try to "lay to rest the ghosts" of his "own sequestered past." I cannot recommend this one highly enough ... I'm sure I will go through it again many times. An absolute no-miss for readers (like me) who thoroughly enjoy old ghost stories, and especially for readers who (also like me) are lovers of weird fiction.

...more

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Feb 06, 2020 Andy Weston rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, ghost-story

Parnell’s book tells of his own journey through ghostly literature, and is in addition a memoir, a search on his part for a sort of spiritual consolation. He has a need to visit the places that have been the setting for the ghost stories that have been influential to him over the years, not to find solace or answers, but because there he finds some response to the psychological trauma he has suffered.
The book works well not only in this regard, but also in bringing the reader’s attention to sto ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Cressida McLaughlin rated it really liked it

‪I loved Ghostland. The descriptions of nature and landscapes, particularly, are stunning. It explores so many things I love and am familiar with - ghosts, ghost stories, birdwatching, Norfolk. I do need to read something that won’t make me cry now, though. ‬

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Mar 21, 2020 Laura rated it liked it

'Ghostland' is an always readable and thoroughly interesting book, but it ends up falling between several stools. As a memoir, it is moving (Parnell's personal losses are painful) yet at the same time rather mysterious. It tells us a great deal about what happened to his parents and brother, but conveys little about the author himself, or how it must feel to live under the shadow of a familial disease. I kept being reminded of the narrator of Kipling's great story, 'They', who talks about everyt 'Ghostland' is an always readable and thoroughly interesting book, but it ends up falling between several stools. As a memoir, it is moving (Parnell's personal losses are painful) yet at the same time rather mysterious. It tells us a great deal about what happened to his parents and brother, but conveys little about the author himself, or how it must feel to live under the shadow of a familial disease. I kept being reminded of the narrator of Kipling's great story, 'They', who talks about everything but the event which leads him to drive aimlessly around the Sussex countryside. For every train-spotterly detail of old TV, books or ornithology here, there is something missing about Parnell himself. Perhaps appropriately, in this book of ghosts he never comes wholly to life.
As a guide to ghost stories, their authors, and the landscape which to varying extents inspired them, the book is informative and intriguing. Parnell wanders Arthur Machen's Caerleon, M.R. James's East Anglia and William Hope Hodgson's Wales to often fascinating effect, though there is also a sense that what he discovers is often trivial rather than revelatory. The engagement with works such as Garner's 'The Owl Service' remains superficial and blokey, with parallels with other texts popping up in a 'this reminds me of' blog-style that leads nowhere. Something similar could be said about Parnell as a bird-watcher, in that he's a great one for ticking off species in his big book of birding but conveys little of the experience of seeing the birds themselves.
One can't not be moved by some of the personal material in this book, and it may be that the absence of answers or genuine 'closure' is the right way for it to end. Nevertheless, 'Ghostland' doesn't quite fulfil its promise. It doesn't really ever to grips with the appeal of ghost stories or why the writers of the British Isles have long been so good at writing them. It says what's been said before, many times, about 'folk horror', and often reminds me of having a conversation with someone in a pub about our favourite TV shows...assuming that person is an acolyte of W.G. Sebald, of course.
Overall then, I've given this 3* because a) I can't give it 3.5, and b) because although there are lots of lovely moments along the way, it ends up being somewhat aimless. ...more

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Jan 01, 2020 Colin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: colin-read-2020, colin-read

What a wonderful book with which to finish my 2019 reading and to start 2020. Ghostland feels in many ways to be a book I've been waiting for for years, surveying as it does, Britain's rich heritage of ghost stories, folk horror and otherworldly fiction and drama. Over a leisurely 431 pages, Edward Parnell covers all the main bases: M.R. James, the Bensons, Arthur Machen, Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, the horrific public information films of the seventies and eighties, W. G. Sebald and a host of ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Colin Garrow rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed

Tormented by the nightmare of a family tragedy, Edward Parnell retreats into the ghost stories that entertained him as a boy. Embarking on a search for the authors, places and images from those stories, he travels across Britain, exploring the tales of a host of writers, including MR James, Algernon Blackwood, Lucy Boston and Graham Swift.

This is a fascinating and beautifully written book about a man exploring loss, memory, life and death, encountering tales of folklore, horror and fantasy and ...more

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Jan 23, 2020 John rated it really liked it

An excellent book, an excellent idea.
There is something subtly wrong with this as a total work though. Even Parnell himself approaches the heart of it towards the end, when he points out Stephen King's observation (in his excellent 'Danse Macabre' survey) that, basically, ghost stories are for the living. There are ghosts. And then there are... ghosts. Fiction isn't real. Don't forget.
This psycho-geographical round-up of UK supernatural authors, places and stories is paralleled with the story o ...more

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Nov 27, 2019 Peter rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019

"It's not the house that is haunted. It's me.
And I want to be; I have to be. Because if I give them up - if I stop looking back - everything that ever happened to us will cease to exist."

This resonated deeply with me. If you happen across this Mr. Parnell please accept my most sincere condolences. ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Jo rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction, travel, paranormal, social-history, memoirs

I went into this thinking it would be about real hauntings/ghosts of the British Isles but it was more about literature and the author's memories. It's slow moving and, while not a bad read, I found it wasn't right for me in the current climate. ...more

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May 10, 2021 Oliver Fletcher rated it really liked it

Touches on so many pieces of folk horror and British supernaturalism that mean a lot to me (The Great God Pan, Penda's Fen, The Wicker Man, Buried Giant etc) and so many more that I need to get into. A great melding of nature writing, biography and geographical ghost stories. But what I didn't expect was for the book to be so heartbreakingly sad and mournful, I won't spoil why though. ...more

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Nov 30, 2020 Paul Butler rated it it was amazing

This is a great idea for a memoir and its depth of knowledge about the English ghost story -- both literary and filmic -- make it a treasure trove. It's reviewed along with one other 'ghost' memoir on the following link:
https://paulbutlernovelist.wordpress....
...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Terry Pitts rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, history, memoir, film

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country is a highly personal exploration of the idea of “haunted” in literature and film. It’s also a bit of travel guide, a dash of history, and a family memoir. I don’t think he ever uses the word but I felt as if he were trying to demonstrate how various terroirs affect the ghost stories and the strange folk lore that then show up in the fiction and cinema that he has loved since childhood. To do this, he guides us through large swaths of Great Britain in sea Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country is a highly personal exploration of the idea of “haunted” in literature and film. It’s also a bit of travel guide, a dash of history, and a family memoir. I don’t think he ever uses the word but I felt as if he were trying to demonstrate how various terroirs affect the ghost stories and the strange folk lore that then show up in the fiction and cinema that he has loved since childhood. To do this, he guides us through large swaths of Great Britain in search of the sites depicted in these books and films. As we ride next to and walk alongside the thirty-something Parnell, making pilgrimages to locations where, for example, The Wicker Man was filmed or where some of the tales of Algernon Blackwood were set, we also learn bits and pieces of Parnell’s own life, how he came to love these kinds of books and films, of the difficult deaths of his parents, and the shock when he learns his own brother has a lymphoma that will eventually kill him, too.

Parnell is not an academic and he makes no claim to be covering an entire field, although he writes about scores of nineteenth and twentieth century writers and filmmakers. Some of their names might be familiar, like Walter De La Mare, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen, or F.W. Murnau. But Parnell enthusiastically introduces us to names that have, for the most part, become forgotten and lost, names like M.R. James, Lawrence Gordon Clark, L.P. Hartley, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. Moreover, Parnell made me want to pursue some of their books and films as well.

Parnell is also a natural tour guide. I would accompany him on a road-trip anywhere. It seemed like he covered the breadth of England from East Anglia to Penzance, from Southampton to the Lake District, with even a dip into Wales for good measure. As an American, I was lost most of the time (there’s no map in the book). But it didn’t matter. I was caught up in the endless charm of English place names like Deeping High Bank, Crowland, Tyne and Wear, Lakenheath, Mow Cap, and Llanymawddwy. I should also mention, for those who care, that he’s quite the bird watcher.

The book took me by surprise. I tend to avoid anything that deals with the haunted or the Gothic or with fairy tales. But a friend recommended the book and I am glad I trusted him. There is a somewhat longer review at my blog Vertigo. ...more

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Apr 18, 2021 Delphine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mourning, evocative, english-past, gothic

How did the English moors, hills and ancient stones shape its literature and film industry? Edward Parnell examines the impact of the landscape and its supernatural capacities in the work of M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Alan Garner, W.G. Sebald, Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy, amongst others. The places he visits deeply resonate within his own past, as he used to visit these places with his parents and his brother Chris - one by one consumed by cancer, as it turns out.

Ghostland is more than just ...more

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Dec 20, 2019 Marcus Wilson rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

In Ghostland subtitled In Search of a Haunted Country, Edward Parnell has crafted one of the finest examples of psychogeography committed to print. The book is a blend of travel writing, history and memoir, as the writer attempts to come to terms with his grief following the deaths of his parents and older brother, all tragically taken before their time. To do this he turns to his bookshelves, and the movies and television he watched as a young boy in the seventies and eighties. This was somethi ...more

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Oct 30, 2020 Chantelle Atkins rated it it was amazing

This was a very unusual read for me as I don't read a lot of non-fiction but when I saw the book crop up in a Facebook group I am part of, I could not resist as it is almost Halloween. At first I thought it would be about ghost stories linked to certain areas of Britain, but I soon realised it was more an exploration of British horror writers as well as a road trip across the region to visit where they lived, wrote and set their stories. This is a fascinating and eerie read and left me desperate ...more

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Apr 03, 2020 Stephen Bacon rated it it was amazing

Possibly the best book I have read in the last decade, this is an incredibly moving, yet informative exploration of the people and places that make up the touchstones of the author's formative years. Parnell adeptly manages to weave together several elements - a fascinating travel journal, a non-fiction book about supernatural and weird literature and film from the last century, and a reflection on grief, told from the perspective of a youngest son, growing old and watching his family pass throu ...more

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Jan 20, 2020 Jan rated it it was amazing

Dreams and Seascapes is one of my best/unexpected book finds of the year! It's extremely well-written, which is unusual these days. The story line, which centers 'round a man's diary and life, is engaging and full of witty and astute observations (and food for thought for readers, whether or not they identify with the diarist!). The characters are of sufficient interest that the reader really wants to know how they get on (even if, at times, peeping through fingers in apprehension!). Well-concei ...more

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Sep 16, 2020 G. Lawrence rated it it was amazing

Beautiful, haunting (yes, I get that's a pun here, but it is). Part walking book, part memoir, part homage to authors of spooky tales, this is a work that is a little hard to define, but it is beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking by turns. I loved it. ...more

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Feb 22, 2021 Lynsey Walker rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book is the literary equivalent of a gateway drug. I spent most of my time reading this searching out the other books and films referenced in its pages, as Mr Parnell has achingly good taste in horror stories.

Ghostland is a strange and beautifully almost dreamlike book. It blends seamlessly from hauntingly wonderful descriptions of desolate and time forgotten locations throughout the UK, into reviews/references to ghostly stories and badly shot 70's straight to TV horror films.

This is all ...more

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Feb 17, 2021 Anna Gibson rated it really liked it

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from this book but it wasn’t to finish it in floods of tears.

Part literary history, part psychogeography, part memoir and a healthy sprinkling of bird watching. Mostly a long hard look at grief and ghosts and how the two spill out into the world.

Leaving with a reading list as long as my arm and a heavy sense of second hand catharsis.

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Feb 24, 2020 Alex Sarll added it · review of another edition

A tour of British ghost stories and the places which inspired them, serving also as a memoir of a family much haunted by more natural sorrows and horrors. I was left with plenty more things I want to read (because I really need that), and even with the writers and stories I know well there were still new things to learn, like Machen's son marrying Hope Hodgson's niece (and I've met the scion); MR James coming up with the wording for the scroll sent to the families of the Great War's dead; or Sus ...more

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Apr 26, 2021 Marianne Mason Sievers rated it really liked it

4.5 stars. Fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. A passing knowledge of Weird Britain and birding will serve the reader well.

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Oct 14, 2020 Alexander Smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a brilliant book. I came across it while browsing the shelves of new titles at Waterstones in October 2019. I decided to buy it without knowing anything about Ghostland before hand.

I am so glad that I did.

The book is beautifully written and fundamentally changed the way I think about memoir, a genre which I have always enjoyed. It combines personal and family history with nature writing, travel and an exploration of the British supernatural fiction that had formed much of the bread and This is a brilliant book. I came across it while browsing the shelves of new titles at Waterstones in October 2019. I decided to buy it without knowing anything about Ghostland before hand.

I am so glad that I did.

The book is beautifully written and fundamentally changed the way I think about memoir, a genre which I have always enjoyed. It combines personal and family history with nature writing, travel and an exploration of the British supernatural fiction that had formed much of the bread and butter of my, like the author's, reading habits when I was young. The book is reminiscent of the work of W.G. Sebald, a kind of psycho-geographical exploration of the cultural hinterland that helped shape the author during his formative years. He returns to that (happier) period of his life following the tragedies that befall his family.

Yes, ghost stories are all about memories, as some other reviewers here have said, which helps explain why our hunger for tales of the supernatural deepens during times of grief and loss. When I bought Ghostland, I was at a low point in my life, much like the author was when he began his journey through the Gothic literary landscapes of Britain. The book became my spiritual guide (to mix metaphors) as I revisited much of the fiction the author surveys as part of my own journey 'back', to my own childhood, as part of my recovery. It was by my bedside, through all of the Autumn and into the months of winter. I kept dipping back into it even after I finished it, finding fresh inspiration and devouring those stories the author considers with which I was unfamiliar.

The heart of the book is the author's own personal pain. I found the sections where he works through his own feelings of loss and grief particularly moving. It also served to demonstrate how turning to supernatural fiction can become a proxy for us, a crutch if you like, as we walk our own difficult paths in the aftermath of trauma. I felt like the author had taken me on his own journey towards healing, and I thank him for that.

Ghostland was, quite simply, the best impulse buy I have ever made in a bookshop. I love this book and will return to it time and again. ...more

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About Edward Parnell

Edward Parnell

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Edward Parnell is the author of the narrative non-fiction 'Ghostland' (William Collins), shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Ackerley Prize for memoir. He lives near Norwich in the UK and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He has been the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. 'The Listeners' (2014 ...more