John Blair Killing the Dead Vampire epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World 536pp. Princeton University Press. £30 (US $35). A dead body, as anyone who has sat with one will know, is an unsettling

A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National ...

Do not speak ill of the dead: so runs a familiar injunction, often recalled when it is already too late, and ill has been spoken. And sometimes the dead themselves set a terrible example. Consider the

Following an individual’s death in Scotland, the civil courts had a process known as ‘confirmation’, the equivalent of ‘probate’ in England, Wales and Ireland, through which an executor could be appoi

You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...