Ernest Dowson

Local writer Katy Evans-Bush has paid tribute to the life and work of the poet Ernest Dowson, the 19th Century poet and novelist, who lies buried in Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery.

Katy writes:

The subject came up on a walk, one rainy Sunday last year, in south London’s Brockley Cemetery.

My companion and I were standing at Dowson’s grave, at the very spot where Symons himself may have stood sombre with head bowed. We had arrived to find it, though heavily vandalized, literally garlanded in laurels, with a half-full bottle of absinthe nestled among the leaves.

Read more here.

John McKiernan is currently planning an Armistice Day celebration at Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery and is collecting your stories here.