Although only some thirty square miles in size, the Isle of Sheppey, which is situated off the coast of Kent, is one of the oldest and most atmospheric locations in Britain. Its windswept marshes and rugged coastlines provide ideal habitat for a diversity of wildlife, and the island boasts some very old buildings. But these fog-enshrouded marshes and ancient structures also harbor several unnerving ghost stories; all manner of apparitions have been sighted or rumored here—from spectral smugglers and ghostly animals to phantom ladies and apes, and a wealth of other spine-tingling phenomena. Folklorist Neil Arnold takes to the eerie fields and darkest corners of the Isle of Sheppey to unravel just who and what haunts this mystical island.

Writing London and the Thames Estuary is an ambitious study of place and identity which resonates deeply against the troubled politics of contemporaneity. Drawing on a broad range of cultural materials including novels, film, theatre, tourist literature, topography, chorology and sociological writing, Len Platt traces the making of the estuary as margin by a metropolis that has been dependent on this region, sometimes for its very survival. Drawing on writers and artists ranging from Middleton, Defoe, Pepys, Dickens, Conrad and T.S. Eliot through to such contemporary figures as Iain Sinclair, Nicola Barker, Tracy Emin and Billy Childish, Platt offers a fascinating insight into the formation of ‘estuary grotesque’, the social dismissal out of which post-Brexit politics have emerged to such controversy.

Nicola Barker's exuberant novels here receive the scholarly attention they deserve in a collection of essays which moves chronologically through her oeuvre. The chapters are broad-ranging, placing Barker's work in its contemporary context and collectively making a convincing case for her importance as one of our most inventive novelists. Contents Foreword Nicola Barker The Barkeresque Mode: An Introduction Berthold Schoene Indie Style: Reversed Forecast and a Turn-of-the-Century Aesthetic Ben Masters 'Temporary People': Wide Open as an Island Narrative Daniel Marc Janes 'You grew up in this shithole, then?': Literary Geographics and the Thames Gateway Series Len Platt 'The Pair of Opposites Paradox': Ambivalence, Destabilization and Resistance in Five Miles from Outer Hope Ginette Carpenter 'Woah there a moment. Time out!': Slowing Down in Clear: A Transparent Novel Beccy Kennedy Beneath the Thin Veneer of the Modern: Medievalism in Darkmans Christopher Vardy Burley Cross Postbox Theft as Comedy Huw Marsh 'Tuning into My "Awareness Continuum"': Optimized Attention in The Yips Alice Bennett Exuberant Narration as Metaphysical Currency in In the Approaches Berthold Schoene The Pursuit of Happiness in H(A)PPY, or What a Difference an (A) Makes Eleanor Byrne Notes on Contributors Index

Although only 30 or so square miles in size, the Isle of Sheppey, situated off the coast of Kent, is one of the most atmospheric locations in Britain. Its windswept marshes and rugged coastlines provide the ideal habitat for a diversity of wildlife and the island boasts some very old buildings. But these fog-enshrouded marshes and ancient structures also harbour several unnerving ghost stories. All manner of apparitions have been sighted or rumoured here - from spectral smugglers and ghostly animals to phantom monks, as well as a wealth of other spine-tingling phenomena. Folklorist Neil Arnold takes to the eerie fields and darkest corners of the Isle of Sheppey to unravel just who and what haunts this mystical island.

Author Richard Jones takes you to 100 castles in the British Isles, from romantic ruins on sea-lashed headlands to splendid castles that have been transformed into luxury hotels.

The story of Uwe Johnson, one of Germany's greatest and most-influential post-war writers, and how he came to live and work in Sheerness, Kent in the 1970s. Towards the end of 1974, a stranger arrived in the small town of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. He could often be found sitting at the bar in the Napier Tavern, drinking lager and smoking Gauloises while flicking through the pages of the Kent Evening Post. "Charles" was the name he offered to his new acquaintances. But this unexpected immigrant was actually Uwe Johnson, originally from the Baltic province of Mecklenburg in the GDR, and already famous as the leading author of a divided Germany. What caused him to abandon West Berlin and spend the last nine years of his life in Sheerness, where he eventually completed his great New York novel Anniversaries in a house overlooking the outer reaches of the Thames Estuary? And what did he mean by detecting a "moral utopia" in a town that others, including his concerned friends, saw only as a busted slum on an island abandoned to "deindustrialisation" and a stranded Liberty ship full of unexploded bombs? Patrick Wright, who himself abandoned north Kent for Canada a few months before Johnson arrived, returns to the "island that is all the world" to uncover the story of the East German author's English decade, and to understand why his closely observed Kentish writings continue to speak with such clairvoyance in the age of Brexit. Guided in his encounters and researches by clues left by Johnson in his own "island stories", the book is set in the 1970s, when North Sea oil and joining the European Economic Community seemed the last hope for bankrupt Britain. It opens out to provide an alternative version of modern British history: a history for the present, told through the rich and haunted landscapes of an often spurned downriver mudbank, with a brilliant German answer to Robinson Crusoe as its primary witness.