London possesses some of the most beautiful oases of peace one could encounter within any great metropolis. In these quiet enclaves, one finds pristine flora and fauna; one loses oneself in reflections on the mutability of life, on the fragility of the thread that binds us to those we love, on the futility of our ambitions, and on the little time we allow ourselves to contemplate those great themes which ought to envelop us—like ivy climbing ancient trees—with that sense of infinity which is true love: given freely, without price or earthly reward, in all its candid purity.
Where, then, are these oases of supreme joy and transcendental melancholy to be found?
In London’s cemeteries.
I do not mean those elaborate constructions—those small palaces for the dead so often found in Italy, veritable cities of stone for the departed. Rather, I speak of genuine “holy fields,” where nature reclaims its quiet dominion: places filled with trees, birdsong, stray cats, foxes and badgers, and rosebushes that breathe life among moss-covered tombs rising through wildflowers and tall grasses.
I have already written about London’s seven great Victorian cemeteries—the so-called “Magnificent Seven.” With their catacombs, chapels, triumphal arches, and tree-lined avenues, they are undeniably grand. Yet beyond them lie smaller, lesser-known cemeteries, scattered across the city, each with its own quieter dignity.
One such place is Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery, in the southeast of London—a part of the city deeply familiar to me, where I was born, raised, and educated. I found myself there again recently, though not for the first time. My original visit dates back to the summer of 2019, and the reflections I wrote then were in Italian. Returning now, I experienced that curious sensation of retracing one’s steps not only through space, but through time; and so I have brought back those earlier impressions, translating them into English, as memory itself seems to translate the past into the present.

Opened in 1858 and covering some 150,000 square metres, the cemetery holds, among many others, the graves of Sir George Grove, the distinguished editor of the famous dictionary of music, and the tragic poet Ernest Dowson. There are also memorials to the war dead, and more recently, to civilians killed in bombing raids. It is sobering to recall that even the First World War reached into these quiet streets, in the form of Zeppelin attacks.
Of all those who rest here, it is perhaps Ernest Dowson who most perfectly embodies the spirit of the place. The Italian poet who most closely resembles him in temperament and fate may be Guido Gozzano. Both died young—Gozzano in 1916, Dowson in 1900, each at the age of thirty-two. Both were marked by fragile health, a vein of pessimism, and unfulfilled love: Gozzano with Amalia Guglielminetti, Dowson with Adelaide Foltinowicz.
On hearing of his death in poverty in Catford, Oscar Wilde is said to have remarked:
“Poor, wounded, wonderful poet. He was the embodiment of all tragic poetry, a symbol of it. For he truly knew what love was.”
Even those unfamiliar with his work will have unknowingly carried his words: “gone with the wind”—a phrase drawn from his poem Cynara, later chosen by Margaret Mitchell as the title of her celebrated novel Gone with the Wind.
Let us recall a few lines from this delicate poet:
“They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”

And yet, as so often in London, the contemplative and the everyday coexist in the most unexpected ways.
For my return to Brockley was not motivated solely by remembrance. The immediate purpose—more prosaic, though no less revealing—was to try a fish and chips establishment much praised locally: Brockley’s Rock.
Having grown accustomed to the notably high standard of The Golden Chippy, comparisons were perhaps inevitable—and not entirely favourable. The fish, though certainly cod (despite some speculation that it might be rock salmon), lacked the delicacy we had hoped for. The chips were adequate, if unremarkable. The mushy peas, however, were genuinely excellent.

The setting, too, does not quite invite one to linger. The interior is somewhat drab, and the atmosphere lacks the easy conviviality one finds in Greenwich. There, one is served a complete plate, generously accompanied by sauces of all kinds; here, everything is itemised—fish, chips, even a small sachet of mayonnaise. In the end, the cost is not significantly lower, and the experience does not quite measure up.
This is not to say that the establishment is without merit. It is clearly popular with the local community, and the welcome is friendly. But it does not, for us, reach the standard to which we have become accustomed.
Brockley itself, however, remains rich in personal resonance. Along the main road stands my old primary school, a place inseparable from early memories. Not far away lived for many years the distinguished harpsichordist Gilbert Rowland, who remains a friend of ours and continues to give concerts at an arts centre in Beckenham. His recordings—particularly of Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, and Antonio Soler—remain, to my mind, among the finest of their kind.
As for Brockley itself, it occupies a curious middle ground: neither overly gentrified nor untouched by change. There are pockets of character—small works of local art, a handful of interesting shops, even a bookshop or two—that lend the area its quiet individuality.
And so, this second visit comes to rest somewhere between recollection and rediscovery. Among graves and memories, poetry and fish and chips, one is reminded that life itself moves in just such a way: emerging briefly from the mist, only to return again—like a dream—into silence.

“I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion”.