I interrupt myself and my series on the lovely Ipswich museum with this urgent seasonal message. I had a lovely tour of the Fitzwilliam Museum with the ever marvellous Robert Lloyd Parry, who showed a bunch of us around on a themed tour "Fear in the Fitz" (highly recommended, and more coming in 2018). By happy coincidence, one of the things he highlighted happened to also appear in the Museum of Cambridge "Witchcraft" exhibition, as part of their Tracing Traditions work. In t

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for that friend who still wishes it was Halloween? Buy my book! I know I've mentioned this before, but this time, you can buy directly for me, which means I can sign a dedication to you or your friend directly. And means I can sell it for the £25 in total (none of that expensive blurb postage and packing costs). And who knows what other freebies I might throw in to say thank you! And you can help me buy things for Christmas for peopl

Reading about the history of anatomy, I have come across Museo La Specola! The Florence museum containing superb wax models of anatomy. And we're talking life size women pulling their skin open to show you their ribs. In wax! I even image that they might smell nicer than the usual dissection. Perhaps like the "vanilla" scented candles of the 1980s (and still in vogue in some houses smelling of cat wee). And these would make a much more welcome Christmas present for me than an

Do yourself a favour. Rather than receive the same old Christmas jumper and socks this year, get your relatives to buy you a skull! There are dozens still available from this wonderful Christmas catalogue, (original link now dead, so put link to my copy) produced by the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. To be fair, you don't get to take your skull home. But thousands of people will come to admire it. When did anyone admire your last Christmas present? Comments of "oh, nice jumpe