Tag - Highgate

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My Tour of Highgate Cemetery

My Tour of Highgate Cemetery

I am fascinated by cemeteries. The protagonist in my 2nd novel, Necropolis, works for the burials and cemeteries department in his local council. I have also written blog posts about the Old Brompton Cemetery in London, Recoleta in Buenos Aires and Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. This week I visited Highgate Cemetery in London. It is home to many famous people including a number of authors.

Highgate Cemetery is divided into 2 sections – East and West. To view the West one has to pre-book. Tour groups are admitted once a day. As for the East it is open to the public – admission £4. And it is the East side that I visited on a grey, wet but mild November afternoon. Below is Douglas Adams grave. Adams wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Note the pens in the pot).

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Jim Horn was an avid reader.

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Below is Mary Ann Cross’s (pen name – George Eliot) grave. Eliot was one of the leading novelists of the Victorian era. She used a male pen name so that she would be taken seriously in a male-dominated society.

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Karl Marx is the most famous resident of Highgate Cemetery.

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Much of the cemetery has a rural feel (see below).

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This lady evidently really loved her dog.

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The multi-cultural nature of the area is reflected in the style of graves (see below).

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No prizes for guessing what Harry Thornton did for a living. He perished in the 1918 flu pandemic.

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Malcolm McClaren (1946-2010) was an impresario, rock-artist, clothes designer and boutique owner. His epitaph reads – ‘Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success.’

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Below is TV presenter Jeremy Beadle’s grave. The diminutive star was adored by the nation’s TV watchers.

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Some of the graves have seen better days. I was trying to locate Anthony Shaffer’s resting place (author of 1970 bestseller Sleuth) when I came across this grave. I never did find Shaffer’s.

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Bruce Reynolds was the mastermind of the Great Train Robbery in 1963.

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Below is a resident of the cemetery.

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I would highly recommend Highgate Cemetery.

Necropolis

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