- Article
- Article
Found items
Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.
- Article
- Article
Trust me, I’m a patient
Artist Rachel Rowan Olive is an expert in the way her mental health condition affects her. Here she explains how it helps if doctors understand that.
- Article
- Article
Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?
- Article
- Article
Why zombies can’t help coming back
Although it might appear that zombies are a 20th-century phenomenon, created for the horror-movie industry, they’ve actually been around since medieval times. Find out what zombies like to do, and how to get rid of them.
- Article
- Article
When you don’t belong, you drink
In the third part of her exploration of belonging, Tanya Perdikou unpicks the addictions that have shaped her past and uncovers the connections that make recovery possible.
- Article
- Article
Doctor in the house
A house is not always a home – sometimes it’s impermanent, impersonal. But other aspects of the itinerant life can be the source of a sense of home.
- Book extract
- Book extract
A history of sex for sale
Kate Lister’s cultural history of the sex trade puts sex workers centre stage. In this extract, she argues why the way we write, think and talk about sex work matters.
- Article
- Article
The father of handwashing
Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.
- Article
- Article
Documents of my breath
Swati Joshi’s childhood bronchitis meant that she couldn’t imagine being able to breathe easily. As an adult, she chronicles her recovery through artworks created using bubbles and her breath.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Solving the mystery of how to be happy
Crime writer Sophie Hannah thinks she might be too happy. Worried she’s using her happiness as an excuse to avoid a big work problem, she turns to a life coach for help.
- Article
- Article
My rainforest upbringing
In the introduction to her serial, research biologist Nataly Allasi Canales charts the influences that led her to passion for preserving the species of the Peruvian Amazon, where she spent her childhood.
- Article
- Article
The problem of the punctured heart
During World War II a young American surgeon working in England perfected shrapnel-removal techniques that saved dozens of lives. Discover how one case sealed his reputation as the founder of cardiac surgery.
- Book extract
- Book extract
“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”
Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Why the NHS is worth saving
In this extract from his latest book, ‘Free For All’, Dr Gavin Francis poses challenging questions to be addressed if a health service that’s free for all at the point of use is to remain possible.
- Book extract
- Book extract
“It wasn’t an accident that I came to you”
Douglas meets psychoanalyst Susie Orbach for a follow-up session, ahead of delivering a difficult verdict.
- Article
- Article
Happy Joy Smile
Drawn from real-life experiences, this short story depicts a character negotiating the UK’s current mental health system. Discover what happens as they encounter waiting lists, sketchy healthcare and punitive government bureaucracy.
- Article
- Article
Unravelling genetic origins from the potato to cinchona
Starting with the humble potato, Nataly Allasi Canales reveals how researchers unearth the genetic origins of modern plant varieties, and explains why their work is so important for biodiversity.
- Article
- Article
This is what changed my approach to interior design
An interior designer examines how emotions and cognitive activity influenced her designs, and argues that spaces reflect the people within.
- Article
- Article
“People see the disability but forget the ability”
I’m a disabled Asian woman, and mother of four. I’m trying to show people that we have to talk about disability if we want things to change.
- Photo story
- Photo story
Portraits, from a distance
Join photographer Michelle Sank on her daily walk around Exeter. Strength, frustration, resilience and eccentricity all show in these candid images portraying life under the constraints of coronavirus lockdown.
- Article
- Article
Tracing the toxic story of tear gas
Investigating tear gas – from factory to Black Lives Matter protest – Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers a toxic legacy where pollution, violence and racism are intimately entwined.
- Article
- Article
Diagnosed bipolar, prescribed lithium
In the first part of a series looking into lithium, Laura Grace Simpkins recounts the beginning of her troubled relationship with this mysterious drug.
- Article
- Article
Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack
Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.
- Article
- Article
Restoring disorder to ‘The Book of Disquiet’
Printer Tim Hopkins explains what making an extraordinary new edition of Fernando Pessoa’s book revealed about both the text and the mind.
- Article
- Article
To write in golden photographs
When Rachel Genn’s brother disappeared, a newspaper article led the family to his bedside. But the accident he’d barely survived was not to be the last tragedy in his life.