The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time [Hardcover]

`...the idea of an Ackroyd-curated collection of true ghost stories is appealing...the book records a folk art form, now itself deceased.' --The Independent on Sunday, Suzi Feay

'Ackroyd's book has its fair share of terrified hauntees...will make the hairs on the back of your neck bristle.' --Mail on Sunday, Simon Griffith

'Ackroyd's collection glides seamlessly from terror to humour to downright peculiarity...ideal read as the nights darken and Halloween approaches.' --Metro, Tina Jackson

`A fascinating anthology of sightings of ghosts in England over the centuries' --Literary Review, Andrew Lycett

`Good for Peter Ackroyd: he has supplied enough well documented stories to terrify even the most entrenched sceptics' --The Oldie, January 7, 2011

`He has found some sterling stories. It's for life, not just for Hallowe'en' --thebookbag.co.uk

An enormously enjoyable spooky collection of ghost-sightings over the centuries, full of the spirit of place, in true Ackroyd style.

The English, Peter Ackroyd tells us in this fascinating collection, see more ghosts than any other nation. Each region has its own particular spirits, from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Some speak and some are silent, some smell of old leather, others of fragrant thyme. From medieval times to today, stories have been told and apparitions seen - ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace, spooks who just want to have fun.

The English Ghost is a treasury of such sightings - which we can believe or not, as we will. The accounts, packed with eerie detail, range from the door-slamming, shrieking ghost of Hinton Manor in the 1760s and the moaning child that terrified Wordsworth's nephew at Cambridge, to the headless bear of Kidderminster, the violent daemon of Devon who tried to strangle a man with his cravat and the modern-day hitchhikers on Blue Bell Hill. Comical and scary, like all good ghost stories, these curious incidents also plumb the depths of the English psyche in its yearnings for justice, freedom and love.

Peter Ackroyd is internationally known as a novelist and cultural historian. His non-fiction books include Albion: The Origin of the English Imagination, the prize-winning London: a Biography, Thames: Sacred River and most recently Venice: Pure City