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How to Read a Graveyard - The Guardian presents The 10 best ... famous graves
William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Bette Davis, John Keats, Sylvia Plath and, of course, Oscar Wilde whose grave in Paris is always covered with red lipstick kisses. The memorial - a naked birdman - was unveiled in 1914, but it had to be covered up because of complaints about the figure’s exposed genitals. Oscar Wilde’s grave on the Père Lachaise is a tourist attraction, as well as Jim Morrison’s grave nearby.
If you walk over the famous graveyards in Paris, London, Berlin, New York, and anywhere else in the world, it’s a walk through history. You meet people you most probably never had the chance to meet in real life, but of whom you read and heard a lot. “How to Read a Graveyard” is the title of Peter Stanford’s new book which will be published by Bloomsbury on 28 March 2013. On this occasion The Guardian shows a picture gallery of: