St Mary the Virgin's Church, East Cliff, Whitby, North Yorkshire Aaah, wonderful Whitby. England's premier seaside holiday spot for goths boasts a fine beach, a stunning ruined abbey, a distinguished literary pedigree (check out a little book called 'Dracula') and the most fabulous cliff-top wind-swept churchyard you're ever likely to find. San Michele Island, Venice, Italy Venice's walled 'Island of the Dead' lurks menacingly in the sunny lagoon. Mourners bearing flowers mingle with the tourists on the city's waterbuses. The island has some fine reliefs and statues, as well as monolithic modern sarcophagi. But most of the graves are small, well-tended and ..temporary. Space is so limited that, after a decade or so, residents are dug up and relocated to a more spatially efficient ossuary on a different island. We spotted a sizable area of newly-ploughed soil garnished with heavy digging machinery.... Novodevichy Cemetery, Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Ulitsa, Moscow, Russia Splendid cemetery jam-packed with Very Important Soviets. As you would expect, religious imagery is not so prevalent as in Western cemeteries, although there are many Orthodox crosses. The preferred ornamentation for memorials is a portrait of the deceased. The less illustrious are represented by photographs, the more so by reliefs, busts or full-length statues, some executed with a great deal of character. Khrushchev's bust is surrounded by interlocking black and white stone blocks, supposedly to symbolise his good and bad sides... Valley Cemetery, Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, Scotland A sizeable graveyard tucked between the grand gothic church and medieval castle. Contains the famous (well, famous for Stirling) Star Pyramid, in which a local eccentric is reputed to be interred, seated at a feasting table. St Cuthbert's Burial Ground, Princes Street, Edinburgh Ancient cemetery in the centre of Edinburgh - fabulously dank, even in August. Once suffered the attentions of Burke and Hare, the bodysnatchers. These photos were taken with a disposable camera on a bright drizzly day, which may be the non-supernatural explanation for the eerie heavenly light in most of these shots. Dean Cemetery, Dean Walk, Edinburgh Handsome Victorian cemetery next door to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Fittingly, it includes some unusual pieces of sculpture. Like St Cuthbert's, it also has neo-classical style memorials set into its walls. General Cemetery, Sheffield Where old Generals go to die? Grandiose and bombastic enough for that to be true, this is where the great and the good of Sheffield recline among brambles and spraypainting little anarchists. Saffron Walden Cemetery, Essex A medieval market town with a remarkably busy cemetery - Bank Holiday Monday seemed to bring out the mourners and grave-tenders in droves. Cute little chapel for emergency succour - kind of Disney Gothic. Royston Cemeteries, Melbourn Rd, Royston, Herts. Two restrained little cemeteries on either side of a busy main road, in a well-padded town south of Cambridge. Good name - Rrrroyston. Visited the day after a snowfall, which made everything bright and strange.