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14 results
  • Article
  • Article

How we bury our children

| Wendy PrattThomas S G Farnetti

Following her baby daughter’s funeral, Wendy Pratt found that visiting the grave gave her a way to carry out physical acts of caring for her child. Here she considers how parents’ nurturing instincts live on after a child’s death.

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The hidden history of homesickness

| Gail TolleyMaria Rivans

Gail Tolley delves into the history of homesickness and discovers that its rich past holds a clue to how we view the experience today.

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Drugs in Victorian Britain

| Louise Crane

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

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Mixed heritage lesbian couples and fertility treatment

| Paula AkpanMiranda Forrester

For a lesbian couple who want to share their different cultural heritages with their child, fertility treatment can get very complicated.

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Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

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Self-obsessing in the age of selfies

| Stevyn Colgan

The tiny, joyful spark of a social media ‘like’ can lead to a damaging obsession. Find out how far people will go when their phone addiction gets the upper hand.

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The girl with no name

| Paul Craddock

When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.

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The shifting shape of language

| Jessica AndrewsRuaridh Lever-Hogg

Author Jessica Andrews explores how her brother’s deafness has influenced her relationship with words and the world.

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The meanings of hurt

| Alanna SkuseSteven Pocock

In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.

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My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic

| Sandy Di YuSteven Pocock

A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.

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Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India

| Apoorva SripathiCat O’Neil

Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.

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Maladaptive daydreaming, gender myths and me

| Laura Grace SimpkinsTanya Cooper

Can you daydream too much? Excessive daydreamer Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on studies into “maladaptive daydreaming” and asks why so few fellow dreamers seem to be men.

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The evil eye and social anxiety

| Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh

The ‘look’ of the evil eye is believed to bring bad luck, illness or even death. This ancient curse might be deliberate, inflicted with an envious glare, or it could be accidental, the result of undue attention or excessive praise.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Healthy scepticism

| Caitjan GaintyAgnes Arnold-ForsterPaul AddaeFranklyn Rodgers

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.