Inscriptions on gravestones yield fascinating information about the dead, their lives and occupations and the way they lived. There may well be a verse epitpah of a philosophical or moralistic nature, but wit and humour, sometimes uninentional, creep in to enliven the sobre nature of the message. This book traces the background history of churchyard memorials and then describes many examples of inscriptions and epitaphs which somehow bring us much closer to the people they commemorate and the communities in which they lived.