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“... In the centre of the room there are two skeletons. Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, faces the front. His skeleton, tainted brown because of the speed and secrecy of its preparation, is seven feet ten inches tall. So towering are the bones, and so impossibly hefty is their accompanying leather boot, that it’s easy to walk past without noticing the adjacent filigree form ...”

“... that of the ‘Sicilian fairy’, Caroline Crachami, only one foot, ten and a half inches tall; Gaby Wood wrote about her in the LRB (11 December 1997) and about the morbid fascination with freakery. It’s unclear whether the two skeletons will return to display when the museum is reopened. Byrne had wanted his body buried at sea to avoid Hunter’s ...”

“... Western culture from its exile in the sub-Zeitgeist back into the mainstream’. The human side of Gaby Wood’s graceful account of puppets and toy stories is supplied by ‘Tiny’ Schneider, on whom Wood pays a visit in her Florida mobile home. Tiny is the last survivor of four siblings who never grew to much more ...”