The End of the Road: A journey around Britain in search of the dead

A wonderfully quixotic, charming and surprisingly uplifting travelogue which sees Jack Cooke, author of the much-loved The Treeclimbers Guide, drive around the British Isles in a clapped-out forty-year old hearse in search of famous – and not so famous – tombs, graves and burial sites. Along the way, he launches a daredevil trespass into Highgate Cemetery at night, stumbles across the remains of the Welsh Druid who popularised cremation and has time to sit and ponder the imponderables at the graveside of the Lady of Hoy, an 18th century suicide victim whose body was kept in near condition by the bog in which she was buried. A truly unique, beautifully written and wonderfully imagined book. Jack Cooke's The End of the Road is a top-rated travelogue that takes readers on a journey through Europe's social history. His personal essays and memoirs on death and dying provide a unique perspective, making this 20th and 21st-century autobiography a best-seller. For fans of Henning Koch (Thomas Quick), John Lewis-Stempel (England), Ben Aitken (A Chip Shop in Poznan), James Aldred (Goshawk Summer), and Tina Brown (The Palace Papers).