If Karl Marx was alive today he would be blowing out the candles on his 200th Birthday cake but he only made it to 64 before as Friedrich Engels said: 'He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever'.
One of the most famous Germans ever, Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery surrounded by so many other famous people that for £8 (£4 for children), you can go on a guided tour of all the famous graves in the cemetery.
In 'Marx corner', are other famous Communists and Socialists such as Claudia Jones, Ralph Miliband, Malcolm McLaren, Michael Foot, Herbert Spencer, Mansoor Hekmat, Yusuf Dadoo, Saad Saadi Ali, Chris Harman and Paul Foot.
Other famous people are Michael Faraday, Douglas Adams, George Eliot, Max Wall, Patrick Caulfield and Jeremy Beadle but the father of Communism is the main attraction with an impressively large 10 foot headstone and the words 'Workers of All Lands Unite' in gold lettering on the plinth.
I am sure that the irony of having to pay to get into the most Communist cemetery in Britain would not have been lost on the people who raged against capitalism and said that working people had nothing to lose but their chains, and now also eight pound to gawp at their headstones.
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