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# Grave Stories

Come with me into the graveyard, all human life is here

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## Posts

- [A Corner of Some Foreign Field: (1) Scipio Africanus](https://grave-stories.com/a-corner-of-some-foreign-field-1-scipio-africanus/) - If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s a corner of some foreign field That is for ever England. Rupert Brooke’s sonnet, written just as the First World War was about to begin, is as much a love poem to England as a war poem: “her flowers to love, her ways to
- [Peccavi: Charles James Napier and Catherine Winkworth](https://grave-stories.com/peccavi-charles-james-napier-and-catherine-winkworth/) - Trafalgar Square: the home of Nelson’s column, Landseer’s lions, Lutyens’s fountains, and, when the British begin to feel that Really Things Have Gone a Bit Too Far, a stage for political demonstrations. The National Gallery provides the backdrop. There are also four plinths which formerly aroused little interest, indeed prior to the millennium one of
- [Marc Chagall: "the light of freedom... and the colours of love"](https://grave-stories.com/marc-chagall-the-light-of-freedom-and-the-colours-of-love/) - Entering Chichester Cathedral through the west door the impact of John Piper’s controversial altar tapestry is immediate. Symbols of the Trinity, the four evangelists and the four elements cavort in bold, arresting colours, noisily clamouring for attention. The presence of the tapestry and other twentieth century art in the eleventh century cathedral is attributable to
- [Jeremy Bentham and the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number](https://grave-stories.com/jeremy-bentham-and-the-greatest-happiness-of-the-greatest-number/) - I first encountered Jeremy Bentham (1745-1832) in my O-level history class. Miss Brown expounded briefly upon Utilitarianism, adding “Bentham is a philosopher of whom you would approve, Josephine.” She was right: while her conservative values made Bentham anathema to her, I warmed to his radical, democratic view that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number…is
- [The Elegies and Odes of Thomas Gray (1716-1771)](https://grave-stories.com/the-elegies-and-odes-of-thoms-gray-1716-1771/) - Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was an instant success when it was first published in 1751 and ensured his popularity throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century. Although he published only thirteen poems in English, he was offered, and turned down, the position of Poet Laureate in 1757. He became known,
- [Laskarina Bouboulina, (1771-1825),Heroine of the Greek Revolution](https://grave-stories.com/laskarina-bouboulina-1771-1825heroine-of-the-greek-revolution/) - Meet Bouboulina, a handsome woman, as befits a revolutionary heroine. Commensurate with her position as a celebrated freedom fighter, Bouboulina has a colourful history. She was born Laskarina Pinotsi, in a Constantinople prison where her mother was visiting her father. Stavrianos Pinotsis, an Arvanite (Greek of Albanian origin) sea captain from Hydra had been incarcerated
- [John Betjeman, more than just a National Treasure](https://grave-stories.com/john-betjeman-more-than-just-a-national-treasure/) - John Betjeman’s passions encompassed Victorian gothic architecture; steam trains; the English countryside and seaside; provincial towns and country churches; and the cosy, banal miscellany of buttered toast, Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, Liberty lampshades, and Hillman Imps. Often sentimental and nostalgic, his accessible verses guaranteed him a place in the pantheon of National Treasures. Academics and scholars
- [Grigoris Lambrakis - Zei](https://grave-stories.com/grigoris-lambrakis-zei/) - The Old Theatre lay at the heart of the LSE: forum for the larger undergraduate lectures, arena for visiting speakers, and stage for febrile student union meetings. But on Thursday evenings politics ceded ground to culture when Film Soc. screened its weekly offering. And it was there, with singular surprise, that I first encountered applause
- [Captain Coram and the Foundling Hospital](https://grave-stories.com/captain-coram-and-the-foundling-hospital/) - Between Brunswick and Mecklenburg Squares in Bloomsbury lie Coram’s Fields, children’s playgrounds and sports pitches to which no adult may be admitted unless accompanied by a child. And at 40 Brunswick Square an elegant building houses the Foundling Museum and Art Gallery. To the side sits a bronze of Thomas Coram. Thomas Coram (1668-1751) was
- [Before there was Amazon, there was Pryce Pryce-Jones](https://grave-stories.com/before-there-was-amazon-there-was-pryce-pryce-jones/) - Before there was Amazon, there was the Royal Welsh Warehouse, and before there was Jeff Bezos, there was the more bardically named Pryce Pryce-Jones. Born at Newtown in Powys, when Pryce Pryce-Jones (1834-1920) was twelve years old he was apprenticed to a local draper. Ten years later he took over the business. In 1840 the
- [Alfred and Ada Salter: Political Triumph and Personal Tragedy](https://grave-stories.com/alfred-and-ada-salter-political-triumph-and-personal-tragedy/) - I am fond of Rotherhithe; it is a comfortable walking distance from Tower Bridge but just far enough east to discourage most tourists… apart from those who congregate at the Mayflower Inn from where a grumpy bunch of Protestant separatists may have sailed in 1620. There is the little Brunel Museum located in the engine
- [William Golding and Human Evil](https://grave-stories.com/william-golding-and-human-evil/) - The BBC recently commissioned a four-part adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. It has provoked particular interest here in the West Country, for when Golding published it in 1954, he was teaching at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. In the opening sequences of the production the boys stranded on the island are wearing
- [Josephine Butler and The Contagious Diseases Act](https://grave-stories.com/josephine-butler-and-the-contagious-diseases-act/) - My admiration for the work of Josephine Butler (1829-1906) is tempered by an uncomfortable aversion to the religious beliefs which kindled and stoked her extraordinary achievements. Butler grew up in a conventional, albeit liberal, middle-class family with strong religious principles, political connections, and social awareness. Her father was an active supporter of Catholic emancipation, the
- [Brought Down by a Whirlwind, a Highwayman, and a  Biddax](https://grave-stories.com/brought-down-by-whirlwind-a-highwayman-and-a-biddax/) - The Whirlwind Despite its location in the rather ordinary town of Reading, and the encroachment of some ugly modern architecture at its boundaries, the graveyard surrounding Saint Laurence church has a quiet charm. To one side is the pretty Hospitium of Saint John, once the pilgrims’ dormitory of the twelfth century abbey. In Spring there
- [John Pitt, An Old Man Full of Years](https://grave-stories.com/john-pitt-an-old-man-full-of-years/) - For blog number one hundred, let me introduce you to John Pitt. When he died he was one hundred and one years old, and he had lived in three centuries. Admittedly this is a tenuous link. Moreover I know little else about him. I did however take some trouble to track him down in the
- [Gainsborough and Zoffany: an Excursion to Kew and Brentford](https://grave-stories.com/gainsborough-and-zoffany/) - It took me some time to cross the South Circular, a vicious road which hurtles from its junction with the North Circular and the M4 at Chiswick, across the Thames via Kew Bridge, and south through Kew and Putney, before veering on a wild course east through Clapham, Dulwich, and Lewisham, to end at the
- [The Celtic Cross, The Bleeding Yew, and The Griffith Children](https://grave-stories.com/the-celtic-cross-the-bleeding-yew-and-the-griffith-children/) - According to local tradition, the first cuckoo to return from Africa will sing from the Celtic Cross in Saint Brynach’s churchyard at Nevern in Pembrokeshire every 7 April. Its song, on the feast day of Saint Brynach, heralds the arrival of Spring. Brynach was an evangelist from Ireland who, in the sixth century, made the
- [Three Ladies of the Crimea](https://grave-stories.com/three-ladies-of-the-crimea/) - In 1853 the Ottoman Empire was in decline and Russian expansion threatened the balance of power. British and French armies united with the Turks fighting the Russians in Crimea. WH Russell’s journalism, Roger Fenton’s photography, Tennyson’s poetry, and the paintings of Elizabeth Butler, Robert Gibb and Harry Payne fostered a jingoistic enthusiasm for the war
- [WH Smith, Newsagent, Bookseller, Stationer.](https://grave-stories.com/wh-smith-newsagent-bookseller-stationer/) - In my childhood, in the 1950s and 1960s, WH Smith was an essential presence on every high street. It supplied some of my favourite items: books, comics, stationery. And in Chester the shop itself had a romantic allure. Housed in a black and white, half timbered, mock Tudor building, it advertised its presence only with
- [Battlefield Crosses: Returned From The Front](https://grave-stories.com/battlefield-crosses-returned-from-the-front/) - Amid the stone grave markers and memorials which flank the cloister of Salisbury Cathedral are seven wooden crosses. Towards the end of the First World War, The War Graves Commission began to replace the wooden markers, which soldiers had fashioned for the graves of their comrades, with permanent memorials of Portland stone. The original battlefield
- [The Wall of Grief and Love:  National Covid Memorial](https://grave-stories.com/the-wall-of-grief-and-love-national-covid-memorial/) - I am one of those extremely fortunate people for whom the time of Covid is now a fading memory, a temporary disruption of everyday life which was easily weathered with “a garden and a library.” Retired, mortgage paid off, with no dependants, no relatives in hospitals or care homes, and living in the countryside, I
- [Lucian Freud, 1922-2011, "Everything is Autobiographical." Life and Art.](https://grave-stories.com/lucian-freud-1922-2011-everything-is-autobiographical-life-and-art/) - I was in search of someone else when I stumbled across Lucian Freud in Highgate West. There had been a storm the night before and the flat-topped grave was still wet, with a mix of early autumn leaves ripped from their trees and plastered to its surface, some already a yellowed gold while others retained
- [Sarah Fletcher: A Martyr To Excessive Sensibility](https://grave-stories.com/sarah-fletcher-a-martyr-to-excessive-sensibility/) - I used to smile when I passed the grave of Sarah Fletcher in Dorchester Abbey. First there was the singular rubric, accompanied by an exclamation mark, clamouring for attention: “Reader!” In the mid nineteenth century exclamation marks were commonly known as Shriekmarks or Screamers, and that is how they always appear to me. Worse, as
- [Thomas Barrow and the Tragedy of  the Broken Horse](https://grave-stories.com/thomas-barrow-and-the-tragedy-of-the-broken-horse/) - Sussex was the first county that I ever visited in the south of England. In the mid-sixties the south was still a quite different place from the north. True, we did not think of ourselves as northerners in my home county of Cheshire. Surrounded though we were by The North, The Midlands, Wales, and Liverpool,
- [Myles Hobart, Parliamentarian: a Moment of Glory eclipsed by a Runaway Coach](https://grave-stories.com/myles-hobart-parliamentarian-a-moment-of-glory-eclipsed-by-a-runaway-coach/) - Myles Hobart was the Member of Parliament for Marlow in Buckinghamshire for a very short time:1628-29. I love seventeenth century history, not least because at this time the English language reached its apogee, so that every Act of Parliament, every Petition and Protest, is couched in the most eloquent and elegant English, as much a
- [Bishop Ken: Uncanonically Deprived but hoping for a Perfect Consummation of Blisse](https://grave-stories.com/bishop-ken-uncanonically-deprived-but-hoping-for-a-perfect-consummation-of-blisse/) - Against the east side of the church of Saint John in Frome, where bushes encroach onto the graveyard, I noticed a strange, shabby, neglected tomb. It was covered by a stone canopy abutting the church wall, and visible only through windows cut into two sides the stone. Even this view was partially obscured by iron
- [Robert Owen: Capitalist, Political Philosopher, Social Reformer.](https://grave-stories.com/robert-owen-capitalist-political-philosopher-social-reformer/) - 1960s planning law led to the expansion of Newtown in Powys, formerly Montgomeryshire, but the heart of the stolid little market town remains huddled in a bend of the river Severn, impervious to the late twentieth century developments which stretch beyond it. The main street is a cheerful jumble of Victorian redbrick and arts and
- [An Angry Young Man: John Osborne (1929-1994)](https://grave-stories.com/an-angry-young-man-john-osborne-1929-1994/) - My English teacher had been at the opening night of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956, and more than a decade later conjured for us the consternation of the audience when the curtain rose on a squalid flat and its slovenly inhabitants. Beyond the classical canon, British theatre
- [Paul Julius Reuter: Truth in News](https://grave-stories.com/paul-julius-reuter-truth-in-news/) - Until the 1980s Fleet Street was a metonym for the national press. Giant printing presses rumbled in the basements of the newspaper offices to which reporters filed domestic and international news. The street held a magical, romantic sense of urgency. Late at night vans collected the packaged newspapers and raced them to mainline stations where
- [Happy Families? Connubial Bliss? True Stories?](https://grave-stories.com/happy-families-connubial-bliss-the-truth-behind-the-epitaphs/) - At Apollonia in ancient Illyria, present day Albania, we had visited the Roman baths and theatre, the Byzantine church and the museum, and now our guide drew our attention to a particular gravestone. CAECILIA L F VENVSTA BYLLID CVM LARTIDO NAISSO MARITO SUO HIC SITA EST CVMQVO ANNIS XXXXII SINE QVERELLA SANCTISSIME VIXIT For a
- [The Partisan Necropolis, Mostar: A Tale of Two Cities](https://grave-stories.com/the-partisan-necropolis-mostar-a-tale-of-two-cities/) - Mostar’s inhabitants regarded it as an old soul that connected the two parts of the city together through a simple and friendly gesture. Writing of the Stari Most, the bridge designed in the sixteenth century by the Ottoman architect Hajrudin, destroyed during the Bosnian war in 1993, and reconstructed in 2004, Arna Mackic continued, Due
- [Rosa, My Beloved Deux Chevaux](https://grave-stories.com/rosa-my-beloved-deux-chevaux/) - My first car was a Deux Chevaux, and it was love. It was a hasty purchase. I had taken my first teaching job in the Kent town of Ashford and rented a cottage in a village six miles away. There was no bus service. With days to go before term started, I handed over £50
- [The Taj Mahal: The Most Beautiful Mausoleum in the World](https://grave-stories.com/the-taj-mahal-the-most-beautiful-mausoleum-in-the-world/) - It is always galling to be obliged to agree with any timeworn banality; galling but sometimes unavoidable, for it is impossible to deny that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful mausoleum in the world, surpassing all others, defying hyperbole and meretricious adjectives. Commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan when his wife Mumtaz Mahal
- [An Appreciation of John Harington, Alexander Cumming,and Thomas Crapper.](https://grave-stories.com/an-appreciation-of-john-harrington-alexander-cummingand-thomas-crapper/) - Were I allowed but one luxury on a desert island, I would not need to think twice: a luxury bathroom of course, with deep tub, power shower, an endlessly renewing pile of soft towels, an exotic range of soaps, oils, and lotions…and a plumbed in flush lavatory. I have always been grateful that I did
- [John Nicholson: Hero of Delhi or Imperial Psychopath?](https://grave-stories.com/john-nicholson-hero-of-delhi-or-imperial-psychopath/) - When I realised that my hotel in New Delhi lay only a few hundred yards from the Nicholson Cemetery, and that I had a couple of hours free time before dinner, I determined to seek out John Nicholson. My street plan had already shown itself to be fallible, so hesitantly I sought precise directions from
- [Perdita, Mary Robinson, the Life of a Georgian Lady.](https://grave-stories.com/perdita-mary-robinson-the-life-of-a-georgian-lady/) - The village of Chawton in Hampshire is best known today for its association with Jane Austen. Her brother inherited a sixteenth century manor house in the village. He stayed there only occasionally, but his mother and sisters became permanent residents in the former bailiff’s cottage and visited Chawton House whenever he was in residence. Jane
- [Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and 164,440 other members of the GMC](https://grave-stories.com/elizabeth-garrett-anderson-and-164440-other-members-of-the-gmc/) - Just in time for International Women’s Day on 8th March an article in The Guardian newspaper cited figures produced by the General Medical Council revealing that, with 164,440 women licensed to practise medicine in the United Kingdom, the number of female doctors had for the first time exceeded the number of males. Women now make
- [Shepton Mallet, Home of James Allen, The Snowdrop King](https://grave-stories.com/james-allen-the-snowdrop-king/) - Wool was the backbone of the economy in Medieval England. From the fourteenth century, the Lord Chancellor, while in council in the House of Lords, sat on The Woolsack, a symbol of England’s wealth. Supposedly, this was a wool bale, although when the seat came to be restuffed, six hundred years later in 1938, it
- [Gavrilo Princip - Still One of My Heroes](https://grave-stories.com/gavrilo-princip-still-one-of-my-heroes/) - In the 60s and 70s all our secondary schools followed the same history curriculum. We began with Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain and made our way systematically through England’s vicissitudes from 55 BC up to 1914, skimming the extreme edges of classical antiquity and contemporary history. The former was held to be the remit of
- [Jemima Nicholas, The Welsh Heroine, Scourge of the French Invaders](https://grave-stories.com/jemima-nichols-the-welsh-heroine/) - It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has not been invaded since 1066, when, as alleged by Sellar and Yeatman, “The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.” Acknowledged, but not entirely true, for though their achievements were
- [Colin Francis (1953-2022) and The Great Wall of Norton Saint Philip](https://grave-stories.com/colin-francis-1956-2022-and-the-great-wall-of-norton-saint-philip/) - On my way to the village shop I take the path across the churchyard. The Christmas wreaths which adorned the graves last month are disappearing now, but the first snowdrops are pushing through the grass ready to encircle the stones. Now that I have lived in the village for more than twenty years, I know
- [Time to Send the Marbles Home: Melina Mercouri (1920-1994)](https://grave-stories.com/time-to-send-the-marbles-home-melina-mercouri-1920-1994/) - You can almost hear the cicadas. With the vivid cerulean sky and the intense light, the pines and cypresses, there can be no doubt where this grave lies. Here, close to the entrance, in the most prestigious section of The First Cemetery of Athens, lie the wealthier and more known of her citizens. The grave
- [Merry Christmas, Henry Cole](https://grave-stories.com/merry-christmas-henry-cole/) - Henry Cole (1808-1882) combined administrative skills with a practical flair for production and design. Between 1837-40 when he worked as an assistant to Rowland Hill, these twin talents became apparent. He played a key role in the introduction of the Penny Post and was responsible for the design of the world’s first postage stamp, the
- [Crouching Lions, Intriguing Graves: Three Unusual Tombs](https://grave-stories.com/crouching-lions-intriguing-graves-three-unusual-tombs/) - There are hourglasses, skulls, extinguished torches, broken columns, urns, anchors, arches, open books, angels, cherubs, lambs, clasped hands, myrtle and oak leaves, ivy, lilies, doves, swallows, trumpets, sheaves of wheat, fingers pointing upward or downward, rope circles, burning flames. The symbols commonly found on graves arouse little curiosity for their meanings are well known. Less
- [Newport Rising! John Frost and the Newport Chartists](https://grave-stories.com/newport-rising-john-frost-and-the-newport-chartists/) - “You should come to Newport in November,” urged the lady on the Chartist bookstall at Tolpuddle, “You’ll love it.” In the height of summer, Tolpuddle was putting forth its chocolate-box best: a Dorset village of plump thatched cottages, a riot of flowers in the gardens, tea and cakes served outside the village hall, pints drunk
- [Fabian Ware: Remembering the Dead of the Great War](https://grave-stories.com/fabian-ware-remembering-the-dead-of-the-great-war/) - The woman crouched beside the white grave marker was Australian. The name on the stone was of a much younger man. “He would have been my great uncle,” she explained. “No one from my family has ever been able to come before. I am the first one to visit him.” She planted a poppy cross
- [Mourning Peter Robinson and the magic of stars and moons](https://grave-stories.com/mourning-for-peter-robinson-and-the-magic-of-stars-and-moons/) - I loved the Grandes Dames of Oxford Street. Of course, when I arrived in the city in 1970, I explored Carnaby Street and King’s Road, delighting in the brash, new boutiques with their loud pop music, communal changing rooms, and startlingly rapid turnover of fashions, but it was Oxford Street that captured my heart. The
- [Mary Anning Rocks; A Story of Passion and Purpose](https://grave-stories.com/mary-anning-rocks-a-story-of-passion-and-purpose/) - Mary Anning (1799-1847) was one of ten children born to Richard Anning and his wife Molly at Lyme Regis, a small coastal town in Dorset. Only two of the children, Mary, and her brother Joseph, survived to adulthood, and Mary herself came close to death when she was fifteen months old. Three women, one of
- [William Cobbett and the Great Need for Parliamentary Reform](https://grave-stories.com/william-cobbett-and-the-great-need-for-parliamentary-reform/) - Of course I did not have high expectations of the new government. Labour in name only now, the party has moved, save for brief anomalies under Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn, steadily further towards the right since the post war years of the Atlee government. Blair jettisoned the party’s socialist past when he rewrote Clause
- [Dylan Thomas: Poems of Life, Death, and Mortality.](https://grave-stories.com/dylan-thomas-poems-of-life-death-and-mortality/) - Last week I attended the memorial service of a dear friend and former colleague. A Welshman with a great love of literature, he had shared his passion with his children, and they read extracts from two of his favourite books: Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley and Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. During the
- [Gods of Small Things:Thomas Carr, Thomas Gadd Mathews, Robert Recorde, Richard "Stoney" Smith, Jethro Tull, Frederick Wolseley](https://grave-stories.com/gods-of-small-thingsthomas-carr-thomas-gadd-mathews-robert-recorde-richard-stoney-smith-jethro-tullfrederick-wolsely/) - With which inventions do you associate the above names? None of them appear on those ubiquitous lists of A Hundred Inventions which Changed the World, but they all made a significant impact in their own spheres. Thomas Carr (1824-74) Thomas Carr was responsible for The Disintegrator. A catalogue from the London Exhibition of 1862 describes
- [Le Corbusier: A Great Architect; A Disastrous Urban Planner; An Implacable Male Chauvinist.](https://grave-stories.com/le-corbusier-a-great-architect-a-disastrous-urban-planner-an-implacable-male-chauvinist/) - Though I have chosen to live in a quirky old house in an English village, yet I am susceptible to the attractions of a minimalist, modernist, city apartment. So I was eager, when on holiday in Marseilles, to visit Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation. Le Corbusier was the pseudonym Charles Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), architect, urban planner,
- [The Matthews Family: Past   Times in Norton Saint Philip](https://grave-stories.com/the-matthews-family-past-life-in-norton-saint-philip/) - At the end of my street stands Church Farm House. There is no farm today, but in the late nineteenth century John William Bissie Matthews was the third generation of his family to grow crops and keep livestock on the surrounding fields. John and his wife Emily Etta Matthews lived with their eight children in
- ["We Raise The Watchword Liberty. We Will, We Will, We Will Be Free."](https://grave-stories.com/we-raise-the-watchword-liberty-we-will-we-will-we-will-be-free/) - Red-Letter Days marked on the calendar commemorate religious and royal anniversaries. They do not resonate with me, but in their stead, I measure the year through secular and socialist festivals. This, the third weekend in July brings the Tolpuddle Festival, celebrating Trades Unionism and remembering the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Rural poverty was endemic in nineteenth century
- [The Tale of Charles and Mary Lamb](https://grave-stories.com/the-tale-of-charles-and-mary-lamb/) - A particularly pretentious estate agent, more than usually given to hyperbole, is currently offering for sale the “former home of Charles and Mary Lamb.” The sixteenth century Clarendon Cottage located on the quaintly named Gentleman’s Row in Enfield was never the Lambs’ home, but they spent their summer holidays in the then rural location between
- [The Plucked Flowers and Great Dreams of Smallcombe](https://grave-stories.com/the-plucked-flowers-and-great-dreams-of-smallcombe/) - Lying at the end of Horseshoe Lane, a private road winding out of the town between Widcombe Hill and Bathwick Hill, Smallcombe Garden Cemetery appears surprisingly rural and far from the bustle of Bath. Surrounded by gentle slopes and the oak, ash, and lime trees of Smallcombe Woods, the only signs of human habitation are
- [Thomas Cook and the World's First Package Tour](https://grave-stories.com/thomas-cook-and-the-worlds-first-package-tour/) - At last, the sun is out, the days are warmer and longer, and the holiday season beckons. Nothing raises my spirits so much as a packed suitcase, and the prospect of a journey. Ideally an eager lover should meet me at an exotic train station or airport, but a local guide with my name spelled
- [The Titanic: a Gold Pocket Watch, Contentious Commemorations, and Graves](https://grave-stories.com/the-titanic-a-gold-pocket-watch-contentious-commemorations-and-graves/) - Last week at an auction room in a small Wiltshire town a watch was sold for £1.175 million. Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes hold biannual sales of Titanic memorabilia and, at six times the expected figure, this represented the highest price ever paid for a single item. The gold pocket watch was once the
- [Grace Darling, Local Heroine: the Lady with the Oar](https://grave-stories.com/grace-darling-local-heroine-the-lady-with-the-oar/) - In the early days of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution there were no women crews, not least because of the widely held suspicion that it was bad luck to have women crewing boats. But women always provided support, working to get the lifeboats afloat, and after an anxious wait recovering them from the water and
- [The Royal National Lifeboat Institution: Compassion, Bravery, and Tragedy](https://grave-stories.com/the-royal-national-lifeboat-institution-compassion-bravery-and-tragedy/) - This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It was founded in the London Tavern in Bishopsgate on 4 March 1824. At this time around 1,800 ships a year were wrecked on the coasts of Britain and Ireland. Under the aegis of the RNLI, lifeboat stations were strung around the coasts
- [Watery Tales from Winchester](https://grave-stories.com/watery-tales-from-winchester/) - Saint Swithun Saint Swithun’s was the first watery tale to attach itself to Winchester Cathedral. The Anglo-Saxon bishop had putatively requested a burial outside the old church, “subject to the feet of passersby and to rain drops pouring from on high.” A century later however his body was transferred indoors, first to the Old Minster
- [William Webb Ellis: Ill-Founded Fame ?](https://grave-stories.com/william-webb-ellis-ill-founded-fame/) - The first sign appeared in late January when I noticed that the wine rack had been pushed to one side to accommodate a generous collection of beers. The Six Nations Championship was imminent, and my partner was making his preparations. When I was teaching I always received two forewarnings as the Head of Games would
- [Patrick Caulfield: Death After Lunch](https://grave-stories.com/patrick-caulfield-death-after-lunch/) - The first time I saw it Patrick Caulfield’s After Lunch caught and held my attention and it continues to do so whenever I visit the Tate Gallery. The cartoonish, black outlines of the deserted restaurant, tables, chairs, the half obscured fondu set, the bored waiter staring across empty space, are suffused with an eerie blue
- [Letters, Pillar Boxes, and Stamps: the Legacy of Rowland Hill, Anthony Trollope, and James Chalmers](https://grave-stories.com/letters-pillar-boxes-and-stamps-the-legacy-of-rowland-hill-anthony-trollope-and-james-chalmers/) - Once a beloved national institution, the General Post Office has fallen from grace. The Cameron government severed the Post Office Ltd., controlling branch post offices, from the Royal Mail, responsible for the delivery of letters. It privatised the latter. After a rushed sale at which they were clearly undervalued, the price of its shares on
- [Sarajevo Roses](https://grave-stories.com/sarajevo-roses/) - Sarajevo is a lovely city surrounded by hills; to the east lies the Turkish old town with its narrow cobbled and marbled streets, gracious squares, small wooden shops, bazaars, mosques, fountains, and pavement cafes serving Bosnian coffee with lokum and baklava. To the west is the new town flaunting the grand, imperialistic buildings of the
- [Young Lives Lost: A Wartime Tragedy in Cornwall](https://grave-stories.com/young-lives-lost-a-wartime-tragedy-in-cornwall/) - I have always been fascinated by the experiences of evacuees, those children of the Second World War who were sent from their city homes to more rural locations away from the threat of the Blitz. Photographs of the time show them clustered on railway stations, clutching gas masks, small suitcases, teddy-bears. Some beam cheerfully at
- [Theodoros Kolokotronis, The Old Man Of Morea](https://grave-stories.com/theodoros-kolokotronis-the-old-man-of-morea/) - England, January: looking out at a leaden sky, a vicious wind battering the window, the garden sodden and sulky from weeks of rain, it is hard to believe that six months ago I was hesitating to leave the comfort of an air-conditioned hotel for the sweltering streets of Athens. With the temperatures exceeding 40 degrees,
- [Joseph Tanner and the Sad Demise of the Printing Works](https://grave-stories.com/joseph-tanner-and-the-sad-demise-of-the-printing-works/) - In the churchyard of the twelfth century St. Mary Magdalene in Great Elm, a parish in the hundred of Frome, is a headstone which had always fascinated me. The grave of Joseph Tanner, a printer, it urges with wit and self-depreciatory charm, “Pray Stranger that the forme be resurrected that’s put to bed with errors
- [Blood and Fire: William Booth and the Salvation Army](https://grave-stories.com/blood-and-fire-william-booth-and-the-salvation-army/) - Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the sight and sound of a Salvation Army brass band. The steps of the most hardened atheist slow, and “Bah-humbug” dies on the misanthropist’s lips, as the first strains reach their ears. I stand with the rest of them, personally averse to religion of any sort, sickened by military uniforms
- [One Date, Three Graves; Tales of Myth, Manipulation and Mescalin](https://grave-stories.com/one-date-three-graves-tales-of-myth-manipulatin-and-mescalin/) - I do not remember where I was when I heard that the Thirty Fifth President of the United States of America had been assassinated, but I do remember the subsequent media coverage of the death, the funeral, the arrest and shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the conspiracy theories, the conjuring of Camelot, and the strange
- [Jack Cornwell VC and the Battle of Jutland](https://grave-stories.com/jack-cornwell-vc-and-the-battle-of-jutland/) - An exhibition at Portsmouth Dockyard in 2016 marked the centenary of the Battle of Jutland. 36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle That Won The War, was a multimedia presentation chronicling the only major sea battle of World War I. On 31 May – 1 June 1916 British and German dreadnoughts blazed at each other, through
- [Children of the Second World War](https://grave-stories.com/children-of-the-second-world-war/) - Last week I watched Dramakarma’s production of Two Thousand Days at the Merlin Theatre. Dramakarma is a community-based project in Frome providing drama classes for young people and staging performances based on historical events in the town. Two Thousand Days told the story of the evacuation of The Coopers’ Company’s School from Bow, in East
- [Tipu: The Sultan, his Tiger, and his Mausoleum](https://grave-stories.com/tipu-the-sultan-his-tiger-and-his-mausoleum/) - The Victoria and Albert has always been my favourite museum, and Tipu’s Tiger one of my favourite exhibits. Made from Indian jack wood carved and painted, the Tiger straddles a near life-size, red coated British officer. French engineers at Tipu’s court constructed the tiger’s mechanism which is operated by a crank handle causing the soldier’s
- [Robert Tressell and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists](https://grave-stories.com/robert-tressell-and-the-ragged-trousered-philanthropists/) - The bus headed north from the centre of the city, and as it reached Walton the lack of investment in this deprived and battered suburb of Liverpool was apparent. Through the dirty windows I watched the shuttered shops and red brick terraces passing by. Walton is mentioned in the Doomsday Book as a town in
- ["No destitute child ever refused admission." Dr. Thomas Barnardo](https://grave-stories.com/no-destitute-child-ever-refused-dr-thomas-barnardo/) - In the late 50s and early 60s Chester Children’s Library boasted many volumes on the lives of worthy Victorians, and there I became acquainted with Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry, Josephine Butler, Thomas Barnardo, William Booth. I recall illustrations of ladies in voluminous dresses and gentlemen with voluminous beards ministering to the needs of the sick,
- [Thank You Mary, for My Education and My Rights](https://grave-stories.com/thank-you-mary-for-my-education-and-my-rights/) - I stood on a muddy patch of grass on Newington Green looking up at Maggi Hambling’s memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft, a small naked silver figure emerging above a swirl of organic matter, gleaming and glittering like a fish in the pale autumn sunlight. It was my first visit to London since the pandemic, in that
- [Laurie Lee: He Lies in the Valley he Loved](https://grave-stories.com/laurie-lee-he-lies-in-the-valley-he-loved/) - As the long-wet days of July dripped seamlessly into August I began a cull of the bookcases. This is slow work, for potential sacrifices must be granted the dignity of a last read before they make their final journey to the Oxfam Shop. Often this results in a reprieve when forgotten qualities and nuances not
- [A Corner of Some Foreign Field (3 and 4): Prince Lee Boo and Thomas Caulker](https://grave-stories.com/a-corner-of-some-foreign-field-3-and-4-prince-lee-boo-and-thomas-caulker/) - Unlike Scipio Africanus and the Beautiful Spotted Boy not every incumbent of England’s Foreign Fields arrived here under coercion. Prince Lee Boo and Thomas Caulker were both encouraged by their families to pursue schooling in England; sadly, both died young. Prince Lee Boo Prince Lee Boo was the second son of a former Ibedul or
- [A Corner of Some Foreign Field (2): George Alexander Gratton](https://grave-stories.com/a-corner-of-some-foreign-field-2-george-alexander-gratton/) - George Alexander Gratton (1808-1813) was born the son of slaves on a sugar cane plantation on the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean, the name Gratton probably that of the plantation owner. He arrived in England via the port of Bristol when he was only fifteen months old. His skin was covered in permanent
- [Emily Wilding Davison Died For Our Vote](https://grave-stories.com/emily-wilding-davison-died-for-our-vote/) - One hundred and ten years ago, on the 4th of June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison suffered a fractured skull following a collision with George V’s horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She died four days later in a room hung with bunting in the green, white, and purple colours of the suffragette movement. Emily had
- [Another Grave which makes me Smile: Norman Thelwell](https://grave-stories.com/another-grave-which-makes-me-smile-norman-thelwell/) - Norman Thelwell (1923-2004) produced talented landscapes in watercolours and oils. He was better known however for his prolific output of cartoons; some poked gentle fun at human foibles, but it was the Thelwell Pony which brought him lasting celebrity and gave pleasure to generations of children and adults. The pony cartoons were born in the
- [A Grave which makes me Smile: Michael Bond](https://grave-stories.com/a-grave-which-makes-me-smile-michael-bond/) - The graves of those taken too young are always painful. Heart-breaking too are those recalling lives which have been difficult, troubled, unhappy. But for those who have led a long life, loved, and been loved, whose passage through the world has known shared happiness, the sadness is mitigated, and when their stones speak with a
- [An Exhibition, a Curse, Two Graves, and a New Museum](https://grave-stories.com/an-exhibition-a-curse-two-graves-and-a-new-museum/) - In the early Spring of 1972, I queued for five chilly hours to see the Treasures of Tutankhamun at the British Museum. Over nine months 1.6 million people visited the exhibition, and it remains the most popular in the history of the museum. It was magical. The now famous words of Howard Carter when he
- [The Anchoress, The Privateer, The Dissident and The Broadcaster](https://grave-stories.com/the-anchoress-the-privateer-the-dissident-and-the-broadcaster/) - Whitchurch Canonicorum lies only a few miles from Charmouth and Lyme Regis, but while holiday crowds hug the Dorset coast the tiny inland village remains undisturbed. It was not always so, for the church of St. Candida and the Holy Cross was once a busy and prosperous centre of pilgrimage. Today it houses the only
- [The Lozenges, The Chest Tomb, and The Hulk](https://grave-stories.com/the-lozenges-the-chest-tomb-and-the-hulk/) - Great Expectations was always my favourite Dickens, not least for its unrivalled ensemble of characters. Biddy is surely Dickens' most loveable female. Unlike his usual heroines who are either vapid, foolish creatures, simpering and affected, or wearyingly saintly and selfless, Biddy alone is credible and attractive. For Biddy is both good and clever. She may
- [Henry Newbolt and My Abortive Attack on Vitai Lampada](https://grave-stories.com/henry-newbolt-and-my-abortive-attack-on-vitai-lampada/) - We were dismayed when we heard that for our teaching practice term we were to be scattered all over the country. During our first term we had enjoyed the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge: observing in the Village Colleges; reading children’s literature; watching educational films; putting together themed multimedia presentations; filming each other microteaching – Chinese
- [The Sad Fate of Giro the Nazi Dog](https://grave-stories.com/the-sad-fate-of-giro-the-nazi-dog/) - One of the saddest little graves in London is that of a terrier who endures a distressing notoriety as “Giro the Nazi Dog,” and whose grave marker is said to be Britain’s only Nazi memorial. Setting aside the preposterous assumption that a dog might hold political opinions, his owner too was innocent of this slur.
- [Jane Austen Slipped in Quietly](https://grave-stories.com/jane-austen-slipped-in-quietly/) - “ Jane Austen,” whispered the volunteer guide raising a weary eyebrow, “slipped in quietly at nine o’clock in the morning without disturbing anyone.” In the Cathedral a brass band was loudly, and repeatedly, rehearsing the national anthem. The harsh, strident tones ripped and tore through the early morning quiet, the band’s amplified performance penetrating every
- [Agatha Christie, Queen of Crime](https://grave-stories.com/agatha-christie-queen-of-crime/) - The Mousetrap and I are of an age. Its first performance took place in Nottingham in October 1952, and after a short provincial tour it transferred to the West End stage the following month. It played at the Ambassador’s Theatre until March 1974 when it moved seamlessly to the larger St. Martin’s next door. WGR
- ["Eleanor Rigby Died in the Church"](https://grave-stories.com/eleanor-rigby-died-in-the-church/) - Before the Industrial Revolution and the opening of the great quarries in the nineteenth century, Woolton was a village. Old terraces remain in the centre and isolated sandstone houses survive, stranded on islands in the middle of today's approach roads. Now Woolton is a smart suburb of Liverpool with large, detached houses and thirties semidetached,
- [The Magic of Bridges and a Disappointing Grave](https://grave-stories.com/the-magic-of-bridges-and-a-disappointing-grave/) - When I was young I cherished a secret dream of becoming a civil engineer. Secret, because I knew, that with only modest ability in mathematics and no talent at all for drawing, this was clearly not where my future lay. But I longed to build bridges, I could imagine nothing more satisfying than being able
- [The Merry Cemetery:The Dacian Way of Death](https://grave-stories.com/the-merry-cemetery-death-is-no-solemn-affair/) - I have never shared the view that cemeteries are gloomy places but will allow that they may be tinged with sadness. In the Northern Maramures region of Romania however is a cemetery like no other: The Merry Cemetery (Cimitir Vesel) at Sapanta. Here the celebration of life takes precedence over the grief of death, and
- [The Thames is Capricious. We Escape Leptospirosis; Others are Less Fortunate](https://grave-stories.com/the-thames-is-capricious-we-escape-leptospirosis-others-are-less-fortunate/) - I had long harboured a desire to swim in the River Thames. Conscious of my own limitations, this was no ambitious plan to cover the length (over two hundred miles, I don’t think so) nor to venture into the tidal waters below Teddington Lock. The Port of London Authority strongly discourages both activities with dire
- [The Lost Children of Holcombe](https://grave-stories.com/the-lost-children-of-holcombe/) - A long track winding through a farmyard leads to the Norman church of St. Andrew’s at Holcombe in Somerset. The medieval village surrounding the church disappeared after the plague of 1348 when survivors moved to the new village a mile away. The congregation continued to use the church until 1885, when a new church was
- [Dusty Springfield: the Dark Side of the Sixties](https://grave-stories.com/dusty-springfield-the-dark-side-of-the-sixties/) - I suspect that in every generation sexagenarians glance wistfully over their shoulders and peer through their rose-coloured spectacles, bringing into fuzzy focus the years of their youth, inevitably a time of hope and optimism, when everything was lighter, brighter, and more exciting. But surely this temptation has never been greater than for those of us
- ["Too many died. War isn't worth one life."](https://grave-stories.com/too-many-died-war-isnt-worth-one-life/) - My grandfather, Harry Manley, was the gentlest of men, and I cannot imagine what emotions he confronted and endured when, somewhere on the Western Front, he faced the prospect of killing other men. Like many of his generation he never spoke of the war. He always attended church on Sundays, so he must have attended
- [Roy Plomley and My Desert Island Discs](https://grave-stories.com/roy-plomley-and-desert-island-discs/) - In Putney Vale Cemetery in London there is a gravestone flanked by palm trees, topped by a scallop shell and where dolphins swim above the faded inscription: Roy Plomley OBE Who created Desert Island Discs Born 20th January 1914 Died 28th May 1985 Desert Island Discs began in 1942. The theme tune, Eric Coates’ By
- [Remembering Raja Ram Mohan Roy](https://grave-stories.com/remembering-raja-ram-mohan-roy/) - At Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol a magnificent chattri towers incongrously above the angels, crosses, and obelisks which line the Ceremonial Way. Made from Bath stone but based on a traditional Bengali funeral monument, and much the grandest of the Victorian memorial sculptures, it marks the grave of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Raja Ram Mohan
- [An Unfortunate Encounter with The Rocket](https://grave-stories.com/william-huskisson-whose-support-for-railways-ended-badly/) - Trains have always been my preferred mode of transport. On the roads, whether passenger or driver, I anticipate disaster: from the BMW hovering impatiently too close to my rear bumper; from the aggressive driver overtaking on a double white line with hand on horn; from my own nervous lane changing; from poor visibility, black ice
- [Three Ladies Who Did Not Go Gentle](https://grave-stories.com/three-ladies-who-did-not-go-gentle/) - “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and “Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death” are two of my favourite poems about death. “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” thundered Dylan Thomas. A more
- [No One Does Death Like The Habsburgs Do Death](https://grave-stories.com/no-one-does-death-like-the-habsburgs-do-death/) - From an obscure castle in Switzerland in the eleventh century the Habsburg tentacles reached out across Europe and across the centuries perpetually grasping more territories. By dint of war, election, inheritance, skilful politicking, but most of all through judicious marriage, and shored up by the almost continuous presence of a member of the House of
- [The Fair Maids, the Knight Templar, the Diarist and his Wife](https://grave-stories.com/the-fair-maids-the-knight-templar-and-the-diarist/) - The church at Norton Saint Philip boasts a clock by Vulliamy and Frodsham dating from 1848. It is not the oldest church clock in Somerset, but it is one of the few still wound by hand. Twice a week clock winders winch up three weights in a pulley system and as they descend the clock
- [Daniel Defoe](https://grave-stories.com/daniel-defoe/) - A year on from the first Covid lockdown I turned to Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year to compare notes. His plague year was very much like ours: the first signs in Holland and rumours regarding the possible origins in Italy or the Levant, mirrored our own experiences watching Italy and Wuhan. The gradual
- [Cilla](https://grave-stories.com/cilla/) - Growing up in a provincial town in the northwest in the 1960s we felt about as far away from Swinging London as it was possible to be.
- [A Brief Encounter with Laura, Alec, Helen and Sofie](https://grave-stories.com/a-brief-encounter-with-laura-alec-helen-and-sofie/) - The promise of “an immersive theatrical event” lured me to The Mill at Sonning. The theatre’s Waterwheel Bar had been transformed into the refreshment room at Milford Junction in 1936, and as we finished our supper at a table in the bar we witnessed the first encounter between Laura and Alec in Noel Coward’s Still
- [Saying Hello to Joan, Alfred, and Lowry](https://grave-stories.com/saying-hello-to-joan-alfred-and-lowry/) - It was a Sunday afternoon of penetrating, unrelenting, rain interspersed with claps of thunder when, shivering as the chilly water trickled under my coat collar and down my neck, I took refuge in the Wren Gallery in Burford. Here was warmth, light, and, magically appearing in front of me, a platter of smoked salmon sandwiches.
- [Jenner, Jesty, Mary Wortley Montagu and Blossom](https://grave-stories.com/jenner-jesty-mary-wortley-montagu-and-blossom/) - “ I have had my fifth Covid jab as I am immunocompromised,” read a text from my friend, “they can call me whatever they want as long as I am jabbed, jabbed, jabbed.” “ I had pneumonia with my flu jab last autumn,” I countered, but I was outclassed. “Doesn’t cut the mustard,” came the
- [Fanny Burney](https://grave-stories.com/fanny-burney/) - In the mid-1980s I lived in a flat in a Georgian conversion in Bath. In the flat above me lived a student of English literature. As I passed him in the hall one afternoon he glanced into the contents of my basket and exclaimed “Aha! You know.” I followed his gaze, but my greengrocery did
- [From the Nile to Dowlish Wake and Mortlake](https://grave-stories.com/from-the-nile-to-dowlish-wake-and-mortlake/) - As a child my partner wanted to be an explorer, so I had no difficulty in persuading him to accompany me in search of Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke who in the mid-nineteenth century set out to discover the source of the Nile. “Ruffian Dick” was a flamboyant, handsome, adventurer and risk taker, a
- [Edgar Wallace](https://grave-stories.com/edgar-wallace/) - My mother loved the cinema, and it was our weekly treat in the sixties to spend Friday evenings at the pictures followed by six penn’orth of chips, hot, greasy, and wrapped in several layers of newspaper, on the way home. In those days there were five cinemas in Chester: the Gaumont was the smartest with
- [Ivan Franko and The Stonebreakers](https://grave-stories.com/ivan-franko-and-the-stonebreakers/) - For over six weeks Ukrainians, led by the brave and seemingly tireless Zelenskiy, have been fighting to protect their homeland from an evil and brutal invasion. And even as they have fought in defence of their country, they have negotiated too, working and hoping for a political compromise which allows them autonomy and freedom to
- [Doorkins Magnificat](https://grave-stories.com/doorkins-magnificat/) - Southwark is my favourite Cathedral, not least for the warmth of the welcome always extended by the volunteer guides. It was one of them who first introduced me to Doorkins Magnificat. Leading the way to the Bishop’s Chair he indicated a tabby cat comfortably asleep on the cushion. “I always have to check on her”
- [The Evacuees](https://grave-stories.com/the-evacuees/) - The village of Mells in Somerset is a box of delights boasting a tythe barn, church and inn dating from the fifteenth century, an Elizabethan manor house, an eighteenth-century lockup, a war memorial designed by Lutyens, a sparkling brook and a community café. The terraced houses of medieval New Street lead to St. Andrew’s church

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