It isn’t about owning a skeleton. It is about access. It is about trust. It is about our shared humanity. It’s about communion with our mortality. I made a decision when I was 13 that means some people think I should not be allowed to handle a skeleton now. At that young age, a bunny-hugging, anti-vivisection, vegetarian, I refused to study GCSE biology because of the compulsory murder and dissection of healthy mice. That decision closed off entire avenues of study to me, whi

Through some fantastic luck, a chance meeting a few years ago sparked my interest in skeletons and came together as a superb visit to an osteoarchaeology collection. And this happened on my birthday. How brilliant is that? Victorian casts of female (top) and male (bottom) skulls, showing strong sexual identifying features This osteoarchaeology collection (see portfolio here) is usually kept behind locked doors and used for teaching the students at Cambridge University. Not on

Channel Four made the first televised autopsy with Dr Gunther von Hagen's in 2002. There was much criticism by people who I can only guess pretended to be shocked that a programme called "The Autopsy" and had explicit warnings on at the beginning and throughout, then contained images of a real dead body. (I actually believe that most of them didn't even watch it, but disagreed with the principle of the general public being able to see a dead body. They may even disagree with

I finally had the time, energy and a willing chaperone to be able to book a Pathology Museum event. Housed at St Bart's - which is famous for many things, including Sherlock's suicide scene. So I had wanted to visit for many reasons. This one, Remains to be Seen, was a talk by the exceptional Carla Valentine. There is no point me trying to summarise her very excellent talk. Go book an event yourself and see the magic first hand! Having a booking to an event also meant rare ac