Author:Emily Cockayne
Almost everyone has a neighbour. Neighbours can enrich or ruin our lives. They fascinate and worry us in equal measure. Soap operas watched by millions play with every lurid permutation of relationships in fictional neighbourhoods. Disputes over gigantic Leylandii and noise nuisance turn nasty and fill newspaper columns. These stories have a rich history - as long as we have lived in shelters, we have had neighbours.
Emily Cockayne traces the story of the British neighbour through nine centuries - spanning Medieval, Tudor and Victorian periods, two world wars and up to today's modern, virtual world. Cheek by Jowl is social history at its most colourful and compelling and puts the people back in the houses and the houses back on the streets.
Vivid and absorbing...like all good history, it leaves the reader wanting to know more
—— Peter Wilby , New StatesmanIntelligent, instructive and brightly funny
—— Iain Finlayson , The TimesA lively study of neighbourly relations.
—— Philippa Stockley , Sunday TelegraphA fine book packed with generosity, rivalry, misbehaviour, snobbery, love, murder and politics.
—— Alistair Mabbott , The HeraldI enjoyed Cockayne's book immediately
—— Rebecca Armstrong , IndependentThis curtain-twitching account is bottom-up history at its breezy best
—— Michael Kerrigan , ScotsmanA great read
—— Penelope Lively , SpectatorAn entirely delightful history of neighbour relations since the Middle Ages
—— Rupert Uloth , Country LifeA brisk but impressively comprehensive survey.
—— Reader's DigestA very detailed historical survey of the upside and the downside of neighbouring since about 1300.
—— Peter Lewis , Daily MailA great insight into how our homes and communities have grown and changed.
—— Kate Whiting , PA syndicated review - Manchester Evening NewsOriginal, humorously historical and wittily anecdotal.
—— Saga MagazineThis intriguing social history charts the concept of neighbours through British history in thorough detail
—— Big Issue in the NorthInformative but fun, with an important message about society, Cockayne’s history is a human one, with all the heartache and joy that entails
—— Lesley McDowell , Independent on SundayThis lively social history documents nine centuries of disputes, noise levels, wartime camaraderie and carparking issues. Fascinating
—— The LadyRelishable
—— IndependentThe avowed aim of this fascinating history of neighbours is to explore the delicate balance between people’s determination to protect their privacy and their simultaneous wish to cultivate contact with those who live close by
—— Good Book GuideA very personal encounter with Roman Britain… Invites us to see our landscape and history as the Romans first imagined and wrote about them – strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world.
—— UK Regional Press[Higgins] is as sharp and sensitive an observer of the latest version of Britannia as she is of the earliest one… Each chapter is not just a regional itinerary but also a brilliantly constructed and often exhilaratingly poetic treatment of wider themes.
—— Emily Gowers , Times Literary SupplementRecords [Higgins’] own travels around the island in search of Roman traces. She includes plenty of anecdotes about the continuing fascination with the Roman past and its penetration of the present.
—— OldieHiggins produced another remarkable British travelogue… that was at once thoughtful, learned, witty and superbly written.
—— William Dalrymple , ObserverFilled with passion and personal interest… Higgins walks us around the landscape of this country as it would have been 2,000 years ago, and in doing so she ably captures the spirit of Britain now, Britain then and Britain in between.
—— Dan Jones , TelegraphWhether at Hadrian’s Wall or in a car park in the City, she [Higgins] shows how Roman traces are woven through British life.
—— Financial TimesA fascinating look at how we have viewed Rome's presence in these islands and what a debt we still owe to Roman achievements.
—— Good Book GuidePart history, part travelogue, [Higgins] also brings to life the eccentric archaeologists who have tried to recapture that lost civilisation.
—— Robbie Millen , The TimesA fresh and readable account
—— Fachtna Kelly , Sunday Business PostUnder Another Sky is not only a work of personal history, it is more personal than that... It is conversational, anecdotal, in a way that makes it easy for [Higgins] to slip in quite a lot of information
—— Nicholas Lezard , GuardianA delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... The result is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors
—— Christopher Hart , Sunday TimesThe beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and in the precision with which [Higgins] skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy she shows for the myth-makers.
—— Peter Stothard , The TimesEvocative...a keen-eyed tour of Britain.
—— Christopher Hirst , IndependentPacked with fascinating and thought-provoking insights.
—— HeraldA captivating travelogue.
—— Helena Gumley-Mason , LadyA delightfully heady and beautifully written potpourri of a book.
—— BBC History MagazineA fascinating look at the debt we owe to Roman achievements
—— Good Book GuideOne of those fantastical novels that tells us more about the realities of being human than most realist novels do…the most thrilling and moving experience fiction has to offer this year.
—— TIME (Top 10 Fiction Books of Year)Kate Atkinson's audacious novel plays a virtuoso game with the nature of fiction...her best book to date and a worthy winner of a Costa Prize.
—— Daily Telegraph