Confederacy of a Dunce - Indignities suffered by the famous dead

Friday, August 18, 2006

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Yesterday after work Mrs Dunce and I went to Brompton Cemetery (Here's a really nice site with loads of photos of the cemetery: LINK.) to see an interestingly-titled talk: "Indignities Suffered by the Famous Dead". The advert on the London Free List (link) made it irresistible: Attendees will be ushered in by black-robed figures bearing scythes. The talk will describe the sometimes bizarre and humorous happenings that have occurred to corpses of famous people in recent times and in the past...."

We arrived at the chapel (perhaps most famous as the outside of the "Russian church" in Goldeneye [link]) and sure enough, black-robed figured bearing scythes did indeed appear at the doorway. We checked out the choice of drinks and snacks (including some nice coffin-shaped cookies with icing skeletons), then took our seats right up front. It's a very small chapel, and by the time the lecture started it was completely full.

The lecture (accompanied by appropriate slides) was given by Robert Stephenson, and was quite entertaining. It featured corpse tales of all sorts of historical figures (particularly royalty). The main themes? Well, there was the old classic: disinterring of the recently-interred (and various related indignities). And uninterred corpses left gathering dust in various places. And any number of traveling heads: chopping of the head of the recently dead seemed to be extremely common, and what gentleman's collection is complete without a famous head as a conversation piece? It gradually moved toward the present, although clearly there were plenty more famous dead whose indignities had to be cut for lack of time. Highly, highly entertaining and very much worth the £3 (suggested donation).

There are a couple of audio snippets of Robert Stephenson talking about other death-related topics on this BBC article about Kensal Green Cemetery.

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Friday, August 18, 2006 4:44:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)