Gilly Pickup – författare

The West End of London has long been popular with theatre-goers and tourists to the capital, but this historic area is also home to a multitude of terrifying ghosts. From the theatre where a female spectre cradles a severed head in her lap and the haunted house where two people have died of fright, to the ghostly voices of children heard in a modern office block built over a plague pit, this spine-chilling collection of tales is guaranteed to make your blood run cold. Richly illustrated, Haunted West End is sure to appeal to everyone interested in the paranormal and the history of London. Read on - if you dare!

Invent verb; to produce or contrive something previously unknown by the use of ingenuity or imagination.The world would be a much poorer place without our great British inventions – from catseyes to crossword puzzles, tarmac to telephones, steam engines to shorthand, British inventors have led the world with their ingenious (and sometimes slightly insane) ideas.The Brits are a creative lot: entrepreneur Hubert Cecil Booth invented the ‘Puffing Billy’, the first powered vacuum cleaner; John Walker was the bright spark who developed matches in 1827, coating the end of a piece of stick with chemicals which, when rubbed against a rough surface, burst into flames; and where would we be without flush loos? We have Sir John Harrington to thank for those, not Thomas Crapper as many maintain – although Crapper was in fact a nineteenth-century plumber who patented a few bathroom fittings of his own.These are called eureka moments, when chance and inspiration combine to create something wonderful. So, without further ado, let us take a closer look at those brilliant, sometimes slightly bonkers Brits who have done so much to not only improve our daily lives, but also change the world around us.

London’s shadowed alleyways, ancient buildings and misty open spaces simply swarm with phantoms – spirits of the famous and the forgotten, the lovelorn, the loveless, the damned, and the damnable. Paranormal London takes the bold ghost seeker on a hair-raising journey to visit and explore some of the capital’s spookiest places. We visit the haunts of murderers and sail on a phantom boat. There are close encounters with chilling manifestations at infamous No. 50 Berkeley Square and you can hear wails and tormented screams from Jack the Ripper’s eternally restless victims as they roam the East End’s cobbled streets. You can find a headless duke, visit the graves of plague victims and come into contact with an unseen force that tries to push you downstairs.Many of the city’s most famous landmarks are haunted, but hundreds of lesser-known sites claim paranormal happenings – pubs, hotels, parks and tunnels, churches, roads, Underground stations, banks, cinemas, council estates and the lake in St James’s Park. If you are not a true believer in the paranormal when you start to read this book, you will be by the end.

Assorted strange phenomena abound in Scotland – witches, wizards, fairies, sea monsters, yeti-type creatures, UFOs and a plethora of female spirits called glastigs and caoineags who appear in various forms. There are bewitching grey, white and green ladies, naughty poltergeists, unwanted love children, kilted bagpipers, bloodstained clansmen and abstract, floating columns of light. Alongside everyday ‘spooks’ are ethereal drummers, phantom vehicles, spectral dogs and horses and a ghost with a marvellous sense of humour who revisited this world disguised as a bouncing cannonball.The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui, the A75 Ghost Road, haunted Inveraray Jail, the Phantom of Melrose Abbey, and the ghostly Montrose aviator are well known but a myriad other phantoms reside among the ruins of draughty old castles or haunt battlefields, mountains, roads, barracks, beaches, railway lines, aerodromes, theatres, shops, houses, caves, standing stones, churches and factories and dozens stay in hotels and pubs all over the country. Maybe this surplus of spooky goings-on is triggered by the country’s long and bloody history, or maybe it’s down to the hauntingly bleak moorlands, craggy mountains and ancient Caledonian forests. Whatever the reason, Scotland is rich in blood-chilling tales and has more ghosts, hauntings and supernatural happenings than any other land on earth.

Castles and palaces around the world are structures of grandeur, might and beauty. From the flamboyance of Germany's fairy tale-Neuschwanstein Castle to the gothic, Dracula-inspiring Bran Castle, perched high in the craggy peaks of Romania's Carpathian Mountains; Tokyo's Imperial Palace, previously home to samurai warriors to Ireland's Blarney Castle, where 'the gift of the gab' will be granted to any who kiss its stone, the world's castles and palaces are steeped in history and stories to tell. Travel writer and journalist Gilly Pickup shares these stories, providing a tour of 50 of the world's greatest castles and palaces, filled with humour, interesting facts and tips on how best to visit them.