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The Review - FEATURE
Published: 24 April 2008

The tomb of George Wombwell, marked by sleeping lions

The stories sleeping lions can tell

AWARD-winning American novelist Audrey Niffenegger, who travels from her Chicago home to work as a tour guide at Highgate Cemetery, visited this week – and revealed that her latest novel is set in her adopted London home.
Ms Niffenegger, whose book The Time Traveller’s Wife was a bestseller, is putting the finishing touches to a story called Her Fearful Symmetry. The main characters live in a flat in South Grove, Highgate, which backs on to the cemetery.
Audrey travels from her home in Chicago to Highgate every eight weeks and takes tours round the Victorian cemetery. It has inspired not one but two books. She said: “I first heard about the cemetery in 1996. I had an idea for a book that needed a cemetery, and I looked about. I thought: Where is the best cemetery?
“Highgate is simply it.”
Ms Niffenegger told the New Journal that she was putting the finishing touches to the manuscript and added, “I hope it will be out in the Fall.
“I plan for it to be launched in London in October.”
The story concerns twin sisters who inherit a flat that overlooks the cemetery and when they move in, they cause a stir in Highgate Village.
One neighbour works as a guide in Highgate Cemetery and falls in love with one of the twins: his passion for one sister causes inevitable rifts with the other.
She admits: “There are of course a number of scenes in places people who live round here will recognise.”
She also admits to being inspired by the many stories she gets to tell while leading groups along the maze-like paths.
She said: “Perhaps my favourite is that of George Wombwell.
“He ran a travelling menagerie and his grave is marked by a sleeping lion,” (pictured below).
The story of Wombwell features an unlikely career which started when he bought two boa constrictors from a sailor in a Soho pub. He charged a penny a peek and toured the inns. Within a couple of weeks he had made his money back, and began a travelling menagerie.
One of his charges was a lion called Wallace, and he was given a wager by a hunting squire; the squire bet his dogs would tear the lion to pieces if they were put in a cage together.
But instead of a bloody set-to, the lion simply went to sleep.
Ms Neffeneger added: “It is stories like this which show the richness of the cemetery and fascinating lives of the people who are buried here. For a writer, it is inspiring.”
DAN CARRIER

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