Necropolis

I've been reading Necropolis: London and its dead by Catherine Arnold (published by Pocket Books at £7.99.) It is a fascinating ghoulish romp through the graveyards of London from Roman times through to the death of Diana. It demonstrates strongly how the look of London has been influenced by the manner in which we have treated the dead and the battles that have waged over land use. The ever-growing population has constantly overwhelmed the inner city capacity and planners have always under-estimated the number of dead. Gradually the dead have been buried further and further out of town thus constantly re-shaping our geography.

Arnold is at her strongest dealing with 2 periods: the plague and Victorian death. Of the 1600s she gives graphic descriptions of stinking corpses and dreadfully overcrowded graveyards. She tells us fascinating nuggets of information: At the spot where Brompton Road and Knightsbridge now meet, excavations for the Piccadilly Line between Knightsbridge and South Kensington Underground Stations unearthed a pit so dense with human remains that it could not be tunnelled through. This is said to account for the curving nature of the track between the two stations.

She also gives excellent accounts of Victorian reformers like Chadwick and the pageantry of funerals such as that of the Duke of Wellington, organized by Prince Albert himself. There are lots of curious anecdotes throughout, from the scandal of Enon Chapel just off the Strand where 12,000 bodies had been buried in a space measuring 59 feet by 12, at 15 shillings a time to the fascinating story behind the burial of the unknown soldier after WW1. It is a cornucopia of macabre delight.

It is possibly weaker about the story of the rise of cremation. It charts the beginning of the story but doesn't then go on to study its impact in the last century and the thinking behind the choices people made, and indeed the massive success of cremation in the UK. These choices also have an impact on the geography of London. However Arnold doesn't set out to look at the landscape of death today. Her story rattles through the wars and the flu epidemic and skids to a halt with Diana and the national outpouring of grief. But the debate today about how to accommodate our dead in dwindling space that is competing with housing for the living has clear echoes in the history she relates. It's no new crisis. It's just one that we perennially face up to too late.