Voguish these days for weddings, Chiswick's Thames-side parish church has seen its share of august burials. So its large graveyard, a stone's throw from the howl of the Great West Road, is just the place for a thoughtful stroll. Painters are prominent: Hogarth, De Loutherbourg and Whistler all have striking monuments. Less noticed is a granite table tomb cast into insignificance by two scruffy evergreens, its railings plundered for war scrap. It commemorates the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo, buried here in 1827 at the age of fifty.

LRB 20 September 2007 | PDF Download