Dance of Death

My father was always very taken with the Dance of Death - that genre of medieval memento mori art where death dances off with humanity. He particularly liked Hans Holbein's later 'take' on on it - where Death dances with the quick, rather than the dead .

He often mourned the fact that there was no place for such conceits in our modern age.

So, many years ago, I drew a personalised Dance of Death especially for him, which hung on the walls of various college rooms of his, before it ended up in the room where he spent so much of his last years.

He is no more, but it is still there.

Death takes away the Student, the Librarian, the Runologist, the Drinker, the Gardener, the Cleaner, the Master and the Director of the British Museum (pace (Sir) David Wilson). Don't ask.

Each picture was accompanied by a hatchet-made verse

Death comes at last for every man
Even the Librarian

Tis true, tis pity - and pity tis, tis true.