Highgate Cemetery in North London is the resting place of many of the notable historical figures who once called London home, and a walk through the cemetery gives you an eerie sense of important days gone by, but also a real human sense of familiarity.
Some of these people have listened to songs on their Spotify headphones on the subway to work, some have been stymied by history or politics studies, and some have been moved by beautiful art or writing.
The cemetery has 53,000 graves and an estimated 170,000 people have been buried there since it opened amidst wildflowers and trees in 1839. It's like London's version of Paris' famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, where stars such as Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Chopin are buried.
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It's odd to think of a place like this as one to visit, but with such important people in it, it's definitely worth a visit.
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Karl Marx, the father of communism, is buried in Highgate Cemetery, perhaps the cemetery's most famous burial site. His tomb is made of a large granite brick block and has a huge bust of Marx on top. The inscriptions read, “Workers of all countries, unite” and “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, but the main thing is to change it.”
Marx was a philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist and journalist whose most famous works are Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, some of the most influential writings ever written. In whose name an entire society was bloodily uprooted and started anew. His grave is on the east side of the cemetery.
(Image: mym / Grave of Karl Marx, Highgate Cemetery (East) / CC BY-SA 2.0, via WikimediaCommons)Global pop star George Michael is also buried in Highgate Cemetery after his tragic death on Christmas Day 2016. He rests next to his mother and sister. His grave bears his real name, Georgios Kyriakos Panayiotou, rather than his stage name, George Michael. He was 53 years old at the time of his death.
With hits like “Last Christmas” and “Faith” by legendary 80s band Wham!, the spirit of George Michael lives on in Kingsbury, where he was born and there is a mural in his honour.
(Image: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty)Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian exile who became a naturalized British citizen, worked on organized crime and was a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He escaped arrest in Russia and fled to London, where he was granted asylum and worked as a journalist, author and consultant to British intelligence.
However, in 2006 Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and died. His illness was later attributed to poisoning by the radioactive element polonium-210 after the Health Protection Service found large amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in Litvinenko's system. On his deathbed, Litvinenko claimed that Putin had personally ordered his assassination.
(Image: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)Malcolm McLaren was an 80s style icon, married to fashion legend Vivienne Westwood, who was the promoter and manager of famous punk rock bands such as the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow.
He and Vivienne Westwood ran a boutique called Sex in Chelsea, which helped shape early punk fashion and became a central part of the London subculture. He also produced his own music, including experimental tracks such as Madame Butterfly (Un Beld di Vedremo) and Carmen (L'oiseau Rebelle), which mixed 80s dance music with opera singing, and included them on the album Fans.
(Image: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)The final resting place of poet Christina Rosetti is also in Highgate Cemetery. She is best known for her romantic, religious and children's poems such as “Goblin Market” and “Remember”, but she also composed the Christmas carols “In the Break Midwinter” and “Love Came Down at Christmas”.
She was born in Charlotte Street, London, the daughter of her father Gabriele Rossetti, a poet who had been in political exile since 1824 from Vasto, Abruzzo, Italy, and Frances Polidori.
(Image: ricardo/rvacapinta via Flickr)Douglas Adams is best known for his modern classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a quirky comedy about the bizarre intergalactic journey of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect that became an international bestseller and was adapted into a film starring Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent.
He also wrote two stories for Doctor Who and co-wrote the sketch “Patient Abuse” for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
(Image: Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)Adam Worth, unlike the others on this list, is more infamous than famous. He was a London crime boss and prolific conman in his day. His career was international, from the US to Europe to South Africa.
His most famous crime was the infamous theft of Gainsborough's famous “Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire”, which he kept for 25 years. In London, he lived as a respected member of high society under the pseudonym Henry Judson Raymond. He is widely thought to have been the model for James Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective series.
Because of his short stature, he was nicknamed “the Napoleon of Crime” by Scotland Yard detectives, a name that still appears on his gravestone.
(Image: Simon Edwards Esq, via Wikimedia Commons)Michael Faraday is one of the better known figures in the scientific community. He invented the Faraday cage as part of his research into electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He is the oldest person on this list.
He established the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics, a crucial discovery essential for generating electricity and transforming electric currents, and he also discovered that magnetism affects rays of light.
(Image: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)Jeremy Beadle was a British TV presenter, radio presenter, writer and producer in the 80s and 90s. His many credits include working for Capital Radio, writing and presenting the BBC2 TV series “The Deceivers” and hosting “Game for a Laugh” on ITV.
His gravestone is a unique white stone with a carved bookcase in memory of his love of reading. The inscription reads, rather poignantly, “Ask a friend.” Above that it reads, “Author, presenter and curator of curiosities.”
(Image: Fresh On The Net via Flickr)Bruce Reynolds is also the only criminal to appear on this list. He was the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery of 1963, which was Britain's biggest robbery at the time, racking up a total racket of £2,631,684, which is equivalent to £46,653,452 in today's money.
Reynolds spent five years on the run before being arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1969. He was released nine years later and went on to write three books and play in his son Nick's band, the Alabama Three, which also wrote the famous Sopranos theme song, “Woke Up This Morning.”
(Image: Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Herbert Spencer was a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist who coined the famous term “survival of the fittest,” which he first used in his 1864 book, Principles of Biology, after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book, On the Origin of Species.
He used the term to extend evolutionary theory into the realm of sociology and ethics.Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism are unfortunately intimately linked to many things in the 19th century, including the rise of scientific racism.
(Image: It's No Game via Flickr)Ralph Miliband, father of former Labour leader Ed Miliband and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, was a British sociologist described as one of the most prominent Marxists of his generation and fittingly deserved to be buried in the same cemetery.
Belgian-born Miliband fled the Nazi invasion of Germany in 1940 and arrived in London. He studied at the London School of Economics and Economics and became interested in Marxism. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II and later became a prominent politician, criticizing the existing socialist regimes in the Soviet Union and Central Europe.
(Image: Jack1956 via Wikimedia Commons)