A long time ago, before I’d heard of Ian Nairn, I read a restaurant review in the Times by – who else? – Jonathan Meades in which he quoted that last line from the entry on Milner Square in Nairn’s London: ‘as near to expressing evil as a design can be’.
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher and social reformer, gave clear instructions in his will for the treatment of his body post-mortem. When he died, which he did in 1832, his ‘dear friend’ Doctor Southwood Smith was to ‘take my body under his charge and take the requisite and appropriate measures for the disposal and preservation of the several parts of my bodily frame in the manner expressed in the paper annexed to this my will and at the top of which I have written Auto Icon’.