Publisher's Synopsis
Just below the windswept veneer of East Anglia runs a rich seam of ghost stories, tales of shipwrecks, smuggling and villages lost to the sea. Foremost amongst these is the 250 year-old legend of Sir Berney Brograve of Waxham Hall. His name still echoes across the picturesque Norfolk Broads. Despised in life and feared in death, he terrorised the local populace. Strong men were said to have half died of fright on encountering his ghost as he rode across Brograve Level, his horse snorting flame from its nostrils. Such was his notoriety even the devil wanted a refund on the bargain he'd made. But just who was this madman of the marshes? Was he really as bad as his reputation would have us believe, or was he merely misunderstood? Reminiscent of a character from a Thackeray novel, his contemporaries paint Sir Berney as well-connected but mean-spirited, disheveled, hard-drinking. After much painstaking research a surprising picture of the real Sir Berney emerges. He was Cambridge educated. But beneath his gruff exterior there lurked an anxious man. He felt particularly vulnerable in his 16th century manor house at Waxham, perched precariously on the crumbling edge of the beautiful, wild and desolate coast. He had a lot to lose. His fortune. Seventeen children. Two wives. Peace of mind. The French jockeyed for position. Smugglers fired cannonballs at his house at night. It was a battle of wits. He didn't sleep well; Mother Nature made sure of that. With each inundation of his land by the North Sea his world darkened. Wracked with disease, death, squandered inheritance and suicide, eventually the house of Brograve came crashing down. This is the real story behind the legend of the notorious ghost of Waxham.
