<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

From head-shrinking to skull-seeking: a history of the severed head

<span style="color: #222222;">A review of Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, by Frances Lanson. A grimly amusing and possibly definitive survey of a disquieting subject</span> <span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"> </span>

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found Frances Larson

Granta, pp.317, £20, ISBN: 9781783780556

A severed head, argues Frances Larson in her sprightly new book, is ‘simultaneously a person and a thing… an apparently impossible duality… an intense incongruity’. History is ‘littered’ with such heads. Pilgrims visit them: the heads of St Peter and St Paul, for example, are thought to be in the high altar of the Basilica of St John Lateran.

Already a subscriber? Log in

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £16 Tel: 08430 600033

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close