Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla

Cemeteries are either places that you love or you avoid until its your own turn to be laid to rest. I have always thought graveyards and tombstones give an unusual prism through which to view a past society abd their attitudes to life and death. Nothing is more revealing than the few words or chosen phrase etched on a tombstone to summarise a life , be it short or long .... A name, dates of birth and death and a chosen phrase to memorialise the person forever . Old cities with neglected cemeteries draw me like a magnet . London is no exception and this is a guidebook for a rather special London corner, Highgate cemetery is located in
London. The site overlooks London vistas .Iit is essentially a Victorian cemetery opened by an show more entrepreneurial land speculator Sfephen Geary in 1839 at a time when customs, fashions and norms for burying the dead of a growing metropolis changed form churchyard to cemetery burials . if you were affluent and could afford a choice grave plot Highgate was the place to be interred and memorialized in stone. It really is a city of the dead with avenues and distinctive styles of architecture and tombstones reflecting contemporary taste . This is a book of remarkable photographs, all in black and white by John Gay... The atmosphere captured n the silver image is eerie, gloomy, a winter feel , snow encrusted , with overgrown tangles of branches. This is the place to reflect on death and the meaning of life and to connect with the long departed rich and famous of the literary and artistic world . The text by Felix Bsrker tells the story of the development of the cemetery and of the people you are likely to encounter on your reverie . Highgate is associated with the tomb and severe portrait statue of Karl Marx , a place of pilgrimage for committed socialists . I did not know that Marx had been moved in death in 1954 to a slightly different location . there are other bizarre tales of exhumation and the epitaphs and tomb statuary are sometimes pathetic, sometimes touching and sometimes rather funny . There are grand moss covered angels in stone, faithful dogs, tools of the trade and even a frozen in marble piano . Highgate as a Victorian Valhalla was neglected for many years and fell into decay but in recent decades friends of Highgate have fought the brambles, and undergrowth to repair and restore these damaged grand expressions of mortality . This book was published in 1984 by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery , which means that another 30 years have passed and who knows what that cemetery is like today . This is a book that will encourage you to visit. Choose an autumn or winter afternoon with lengthening shadows for your perambulation . of its genre and based on a book recreating a mood and atmosphere it earns 4 stars. . show less

In "Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla" the London historian Felix Barker tells fully and for the first time the story of this burial ground. But, above all, the book contains a unique record of its moods and its monuments caught over the last twenty years by John Gay whose photographs superbly and evocatively convey the spirit of the place.