In death, composer Bela Bartok travelled from New York to Budapest; Prince Lasa of Serbia toured his country's contested territories. While they were alive, the two men may have had little in common, but like other European leaders and heroes in the post-Communist era, both made journeys posthumously, when they were exhumed and reinterred. In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, anthropologist Katherine Verdery examines the forces that have inspired these exhumations.
Paul Allen discusses her findings and also reports on a major exhibition of the work of Victor Pasmore at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool.