A ringside view

As a student of history, I am enthralled by this beautiful, and slightly melancholic, observation by G.M. Trevelyan, the eminent historian:

"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground walked other men and women as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall be gone like ghosts at cockrow."

This feeling is particularly pronounced when visiting a graveyard. Graves are undoubtedly sites of 'public history' and, as any visitor to the First World War battlefields will testify, they can provoke profound feelings of reflection.

One grave in south-west London has been described by Jeremy Paxman - the leading British broadcaster and history buff - as "one of the great unvisited sites" of the capital, and I would concur. If ever there was a hidden gem in the great - and tourist-heavy - city of London, this is it.

The grave is Richard Burton's. Not the legendary actor (who, interestingly, is buried in Switzerland, not his native Wales) but his namesake, who I would argue is infinitely more interesting.

Burton, nicknamed 'Ruffian Dick' from his days at Oxford University, was a Victorian explorer, who helped discover the source of the River Nile in Africa. He was one of the first Europeans to visit Mecca (disguised as 'Sheikh Abdullah'), and is said to have mastered 40 languages and dialects by the time of his death in 1890. He was described in his Times obituary as being "one of the most remarkable men of his time."

His grave - located at the beautiful St Mary Magdalen's Roman Catholic Church in Mortlake - is a striking sandstone mausoleum in the shape of an elaborate desert tent (like one he used in Syria on one of his many travels) and is adorned with a crucifix, a Star of David and the Islamic crescent-and-star.

He is buried alongside his wife Isabel, and you can see their coffins through a glass panel at the rear of the mausoleum. A touching inscription on the tomb hails the man "to whom adventures were as toys".

Next time you're in London, enjoy the view from London Eye and marvel at the majesty of Buckingham Palace, but also try and take the less-travelled road to Richard Burton's beguiling grave in Mortlake, and reflect on the life of a remarkable man. It is a site and a setting where the "poetry of history" is striking and magical.