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Behind-The-Books Blog

A purposeful list…

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

The internet is more depressing than ever these days. To cater to the demand to have something new each day, ‘news’ sites clog up the web with endless, repetitive, and pointless lists: ‘Twenty cities you MUST visit’, ‘Ten signs your relationship ISN’T working’, ’73 celebs with green eyes’…  Nevertheless, I am not one to miss out on exploiting a fad. So this week I am proud to present my own, ground-breaking, insightful, life-changing list:

Top three dead blokes to gawp at! (Subtitle: If you ain’t seen these stiffs, you ain’t lived)

1. Chairman Mao – Tianamen Square, Beijing
The first time I tried to see Mao, I was told that Mao could not possibly see anybody, as he was being done up for the Olympics. Three years later, I finally got to see the fruits of this labour, and I must say the make-up people did a lovely job. Mao was glowing. Literally glowing: his head was of such a bright luminescent orange, as to give the impression of making a very serviceable child’s night-light. Sight of such a novelty is definitely worth the agonisingly slow shuffle through the pilgrim-packed mausoleum.

2. Comrade Lenin, Red Square, Moscow
Now, some people may have their doubts when it comes to Lenin. Some may even go so far as to say something like ‘If that’s really Lenin, I’m an 8ft ginger Peruvian polo-pony trainer.’ And admittedly, yes, the fact that Stalin’s scientists did happen upon the formula for the eternal preservation of a corpse within months of Lenin’s death is something of a miraculous fortune. But then, Stalin was an extraordinary motivator.
The fact that Lenin’s body is required to be annually dunked in preservative, is a far more likely explanation for the waxy quality of his face than, for instance, the possibility that ‘Lenin’ may actually be a wax work. And besides, it is impossible to say that he is not he, for one cannot get a proper look – mausoleum visitors are not permitted to stand and stare, but must always keep moving. Which is also definitely not suspicious.

3. Mr Jeremy Bentham, University College London
The founding father of my alma mater, UCL, can lay claim to being the least slovenly of these cadavers – for he is sitting up! In a glass cabinet in the main UCL building. Yet while his, incidentally impeccably dressed, body can be so easily viewed, his real head is in storage – removed there, legend has it, after some pesky students from rival King’s College London once stole it for a game of football. Rumours surrounding the continued use of the rest of Bentham’s body abound among gossipy undergradlings . . . I once heard, for instance, that he’s wheeled out for graduation ceremonies. Having missed my own graduation ceremony, I am happily unable to refute this.

Georgina Phipps, Editorial Administrator

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