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Loren's Reviews > London's Cemeteries
London's Cemeteries
by Darren Beach
by Darren Beach
Despite its pocket size, this is more of an armchair travel book than a take-along guide to cemeteries. It only includes maps to the largest graveyards and most cemeteries rate only a page or two to cover their history, architecture, and celebrity graves. That being said, it is still a worthy addition to your cemetery library.
And it's great fun. The author describes the "tree that killed Marc Bolan" outside Barnes Common Cemetery. He encourages that respects be paid at the most tenuous celebrities. He gushes when a cemetery is particularly beautiful and snipes when one isn't up to standard. He seems to have actually visited each of the 50 cemeteries listed herein. He is honest in his assessments: some cemeteries "could have been beautiful," some deserve visits only by completists, others suffer from "anodyne" (a word he uses repeatedly) chapels or crematory rose gardens.
Of course, the book could have more photographs. Not every cemetery gets one, but some of those includes are spectacular. My favorite is of the statue of an aviator killed in 1938 and buried in Eltham Cemetery. As the author points out, he looks he's wearing a "post-apocalyptic anti-radioactivity suit." I wouldn't have known about him without this book.
I did find a few errors, which of course call into question all the stuff I don't know cold. For instance, in the entry on Old Mortlake Cemetery, the author states in an aside that Charles Dickens is buried in Highgate West. Dickens is buried at Westminster Abbey, against his wishes. His family lies at Highgate. Later, in the entry on Greenwich Cemetery, Beach compares its views of London to the views of Paris from Montmartre's Pere Lachaise. I'm not even sure which Parisian cemetery he means here (it might be Montmartre itself or St. Denis), but Pere Lachaise is in the east of Paris and Montmartre is in the north. He's mixing metaphors.
Even so, I give this book four stars. It's added a bunch of cemeteries to my must-see list. I will just be careful to cross-reference the author's enthusiasm with other books on London cemeteries before I take what he writes as gospel.
And it's great fun. The author describes the "tree that killed Marc Bolan" outside Barnes Common Cemetery. He encourages that respects be paid at the most tenuous celebrities. He gushes when a cemetery is particularly beautiful and snipes when one isn't up to standard. He seems to have actually visited each of the 50 cemeteries listed herein. He is honest in his assessments: some cemeteries "could have been beautiful," some deserve visits only by completists, others suffer from "anodyne" (a word he uses repeatedly) chapels or crematory rose gardens.
Of course, the book could have more photographs. Not every cemetery gets one, but some of those includes are spectacular. My favorite is of the statue of an aviator killed in 1938 and buried in Eltham Cemetery. As the author points out, he looks he's wearing a "post-apocalyptic anti-radioactivity suit." I wouldn't have known about him without this book.
I did find a few errors, which of course call into question all the stuff I don't know cold. For instance, in the entry on Old Mortlake Cemetery, the author states in an aside that Charles Dickens is buried in Highgate West. Dickens is buried at Westminster Abbey, against his wishes. His family lies at Highgate. Later, in the entry on Greenwich Cemetery, Beach compares its views of London to the views of Paris from Montmartre's Pere Lachaise. I'm not even sure which Parisian cemetery he means here (it might be Montmartre itself or St. Denis), but Pere Lachaise is in the east of Paris and Montmartre is in the north. He's mixing metaphors.
Even so, I give this book four stars. It's added a bunch of cemeteries to my must-see list. I will just be careful to cross-reference the author's enthusiasm with other books on London cemeteries before I take what he writes as gospel.
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Good points, Carole. My edition is one of the older ones. I expect the errors have been corrected by the newest one.
This little book has been very useful to me in that it gives directions and bus routes to all cemeteries and introduced me to a few I didn't know of previously. For it's price I thought it was well worth it.