Stephen Booth: Christmas . . . in a Cave

Stephen Booth: Christmas . . . in a Cave

How about a Christmas celebration in a cave? It’s nothing unusual – at least, not in the Peak District town of Castleton. Every year, visitors enjoy carols and brass band music inside Peak Cavern, a cave system known to generations of local people as the home of the Devil. It’s probably best not to venture too far into the passages, though. Once past Pluto’s Dining Room and The Devil’s Cellar, you reach the River Styx, the crossing into the Underworld. This was where Cock Lorrell – ‘the most notorious knave that ever lived’ – held cannibal feasts with his gang of brigands, who hid out in the caves to waylay innocent passers-by. According to the ballad by Ben Jonson, they dined on:

A rich, fat Usurer, stewed in his marrow,

With him a Lawyer’s head and green sawce.

Then carbonado’d and cook’d with pains

Was brought up a Serjent’s cloven face.

The sawce was made of a Yeoman’s brains

That had been beaten out with his mace.

Above ground, Castleton’s Christmas lights might attract you to shop in the main street or enjoy a more traditional dinner in one of the pubs. But keep an eye on the weather, if you’re there. When the snow sweeps in from the slopes of Mam Tor, the Peak District looks beautiful. But tourists have been known to go missing in these hills at Christmas. And not all of them by accident . . .

Already Dead is Stephen Booth’s latest breathtaking thriller, starring DS Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry.
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