One of the people mentioned in Great Burial Places as being interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is Jean-Francois Champollion, the genius who cracked the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic code. He was an arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution who made loyal friends and bitter enemies and was most of the time at odds with the Church and much of the Establishment. I have just come across an entertaining and authoritative biography of him by Andrew Robinson called Cracking the Egyptian Code. The revolutionary life of Jean-Francois Champollion (Oxford University Press). A great read.
