Jeremy Bentham's Auto-Icon

The lowdown

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham, founder of utilitarianism and a guiding spirit behind University College London, left unusual instructions in his will. His body was to be preserved, dressed in his own clothes and put on display as what he called an Auto-Icon, a self-image, as a memorial and a typically rational gesture against superstition about death.

Nearly two hundred years on, there he sits in a glass case at UCL, complete with his walking stick. His real head proved too gruesome to display and is kept safely elsewhere, replaced by a wax one. It is free to visit, genuinely uncanny, and one of the most extraordinary things to see in any London university.