London Month of the Dead

LAST RITES A Guided Tour of Death and the Dead in the Ancient City with Richard Barnett Sunday 18th October 2026 at 11:00 am More than three hundred thousand people work in the Square Mile each day, but their numbers are dwarfed by the dead beneath their feet. London is a great city of the departed, its oldest districts – Holborn, Fleet Street, the ancient City itself – built on two thousand years of bodies, bones and dust. Join historian and author Richard Barnett as he uncovers the forgotten lives and extraordinary afterlives of the capital’s ordinary dead. From murderers dancing the hempen jig at Newgate to plague victims buried in vast emergency pits, from vanished churchyards and forgotten graveyards to the ever changing rituals of death and burial, discover how London’s nameless dead have shaped the streets, stories and identity of the modern city. In London, the past is never far below the surface. Tickets £15 include a 20% donation to Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Please click here to purchase. Richard Barnett Richard Barnett is a writer, broadcaster and historian of science and medicine. A former medical student, he has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and is the author of eight books, including Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures and the acclaimed Sick Rose trilogy. He also presents Sun Street Passage, a monthly podcast exploring London’s history one street at a time.

LAST RITES
A Guided Tour of Death and the Dead in the Ancient City with Richard Barnett
Sunday 18th October 2026 at 11:00 am

More than three hundred thousand people work in the Square Mile each day, but their numbers are dwarfed by the dead beneath their feet. London is a great city of the departed, its oldest districts – Holborn, Fleet Street, the ancient City itself – built on two thousand years of bodies, bones and dust.

Join historian and author Richard Barnett as he uncovers the forgotten lives and extraordinary afterlives of the capital’s ordinary dead. From murderers dancing the hempen jig at Newgate to plague victims buried in vast emergency pits, from vanished churchyards and forgotten graveyards to the ever changing rituals of death and burial, discover how London’s nameless dead have shaped the streets, stories and identity of the modern city. In London, the past is never far below the surface.

Tickets £15 include a 20% donation to Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Please click here to purchase.

Richard Barnett
Richard Barnett is a writer, broadcaster and historian of science and medicine. A former medical student, he has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and is the author of eight books, including Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures and the acclaimed Sick Rose trilogy. He also presents Sun Street Passage, a monthly podcast exploring London’s history one street at a time.