Highgate Cemetery
Swain’s Lane
Highgate, London UK
Ever wandered around a cemetery? They’re interesting places to visit, especially older ones that have a bit of history to them. Highgate Cemetery in London is one such place.
There are some quirky headstones here too. This one below sums up their situation pretty clearly. Painter Patrick Caulfield had a sense of humour. For the musician in the family why not put a marble grand piano as a headstone there! It turns out that Harry Thornton was a concert pianist and he entertained the troops during World War 1 with his wife. He died during the flu epidemic around the end of the war. TV presenter Jeremy Beadle apparently led a quirky life and continued this with his headstone.
Karl Marx is probably the most famous “resident” at Highgate Cemetery. His tomb has a large bronze bust on top of a marble stand. Marx was of course in exile in London and ironically wrote his manifesto, Das Capital, under the protection of the capitalists themselves. Marx died on 14 March 1883 and was buried here at Highgate Cemetery, with his wife, who had died eighteen months earlier.
The answer is 42. If that means something to you then you know it’s the author Douglas Adams we’re talking about. He was the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and all the adventures of Arthur Dent and friends. Who can forget Marvin the paranoid android. The great that came from Marvin were great - “Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, Oh God, I'm so depressed”. Quite appropriately his grave has pencils in a jar there.
Malcolm McLaren is often described as the grandfather of punk. He was most famous as the manager of The Sex Pistols. Unsurprisingly, his funeral had quite a few famous people along including Sir Bob Geldof, Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, Adam Ant and alternative poet John Cooper-Clarke.
This eerily beautiful cemetery is a great place to take a wander. The graves and headstones are in various states of repair, or decay, but they still look wonderful. This cemetery has been here since 1839 and it will be here for a long while to come. While it has its share of famous people resident here, it’s a lovely place anyway and gets a lot of visitors.