The quiet sleepers of London’s Highgate Cemetery make up a subterranean neighbourhood of their own, and a rather exclusive one at that. Karl Marx is buried here, along with many other famous names: George Eliot, Christina Rossetti…The stone angels that guard them, deserve a book of their own:
But it’s not just for a love of cold stone that I used to walk there. I love the wildness of the place – the overgrown avenues of untameable green, ivy resplendent, as unruly as some of the ‘residents’ were in life!
Highgate was supposedly influenced by the great Parisian Cemetery, Père Lachaise. On a visit to the French capital, I remember visiting the grave of Oscar Wilde – something of a pilgrimage for my teenage self. The Smiths song ‘Cemetery Gates’ references Wilde (along with Keats and Yeats) – meeting at the cemetery gates, the singer invokes the ghosts of his literary heroes in a light hearted game with his companion.
