Dictator Chic: Tombs of the Great Leaders | View | Architectural Review
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rom stone age burials to defunct dictators, Leick’s volume - though an informed travelogue - lacks consistency and greater meaning
My late headmaster, who was an enthusiast for the court of Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu, used to say that all bad things stemmed from the French Revolution. The tombs of defunct dictators provide a perfect illustration of this theory, for it was surely the psychopaths and gangsters of the immediate post-revolutionary government and their orgy of state-sponsored pagan kitsch, hatefully adorned with neo-classical tropes mendaciously promoted as ‘enlightenment’, that came to inspire the tyrants’ tombs. Leick’s book describes a good selection, starting with Communists and moving through European Fascists to Asian separatists and African nationalists. It will sell well. The Collins Gem series once included a handy little guide to Dictators, and this can sit on the shelf next to that.
