I almost didn’t wear my new cape to Highgate Cemetery today, but then I remembered I love it and also I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks.

By the way, look who’s here! Blink and you’ll miss him.

I don’t know Sally, but I’m pretty sure she’s trying to tell us something important, here. Maybe listen.

New author photo. :V

Marx’s grave is surrounded by the graves of other socialists and anti-imperialists.

Also, this memorial has definitely Seen Some Shit.

“Who saw the King in His beauty“ is probably the most incredible euphemism for “died“ I have ever heard in my entire life.

Word.

Anyway, just had a venison cottage pie for lunch, and now back to Highgate for a tour of the part of the cemetery and they don’t let you go in alone.

Update: Okay, wow.

Somebody I didn’t expect to see in the West Cemetery at Highgate: Alexander Litvinenko. You’ve probably seen photos of him slowly dying in a hospital bed from polonium radiation poisoning on the orders of Putin.

My probable favorite manifestation of the Victorian preoccupation with Egyptian architecture: The Egyptian Avenue. This gate is flanked by obelisks, and lined with tunes.

Just in case you thought the American south invented shoving your kid on stage for a little gospel vaudeville in the name of notoriety.

The Circle of Lebanon, named for a Lebanon cedar tree that used to grow here, but is long gone. You’ve probably seen this place in a bad Dracula movie, or a kinda-just-there Harry Potter movie.

The very first grave in Highgate Cemetery, situated high on a hill that was once scenic. Elizabeth Jackson, age 36. That’s pretty much all we know, apparently.

You’ve probably noticed how overgrown the West Cemetery is. I’d always thought that was on purpose, but apparently not. The gardeners in charge of pulling weeds and evicting any saplings were drafted for WWII, and 7 years’ neglect was all it took for a forest to establish itself.

The grave of George Wombwell, a traveling “menagerist” of great renown who began his career after buying two boa constrictors off a dock and taking them to pubs, charging punters to stick their hands in the box to show off how brave they were. His lion Nero features prominently.

Another mourning animal of Highgate: the dog of Thomas Sayers, famous bare-knuckle underground prizefighter. His dog, the only family member he hadn’t alienated previously, lay on his grave after he drank himself to death five years after his greatest fight.

The most popular pagan iconography in Highgate is from Greece and Egypt: Cremation urns and obelisks. Victorians didn’t do cremation, but having an urn on your grave showed off how educated/aware you were. And Egyptology was a huge fad after the translation of the Rosetta Stone.

In case you were wondering.