Skulls!

Book of the moment: Skulls

Skulls, an exploration of Alan Dudley's curious collection

Simon Winchester

Black Dog & Leventhal, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-1-57912-912-5

A beautiful book. It celebrates bone, with photographs that revel in the curve and the line, the sharp edges and deep shadows that make skulls so captivating.

Skulls is as rich and as stark as the bones it holds. There is minimal text. For each skull, we get the basic zoological information and that's it. But that's all that's needed. I find myself drawn in, turning pages, skeletal browsing and brooding a bit. The collection itself presented is intriguing. These are all from the collection of a single man. Alan Dudley has a collection of 2,000 skulls and a passion for collecting that eventually brought him into court with a handful of skulls that had slipped into his possession in breach of international and national law

A reminder not to lose one's own perspective perhaps. But then, open the book and revere the animals brought to you here, through the temples of their bones and be inspired.

 Natural History Book Shop - you could get a copy here

Black Dog and Leventhal - publishers

my own bones tend to end a bit more festive than the beauties in this book