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The Key to Memory: Use art to articulate

Danny Rees explains what William Utermohlen’s self-portraits can tell us about how and why we remember.

Shame’s long shadow

What is shame and why is it so powerful? A violent sexual assault left Lucia Osborne-Crowley suffocated with shame, but she’s now determined to understand how this overwhelming emotion works.

How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

Children in burns prevention campaigns

Whose responsibility is it to prevent accidental burns and scalds in the home? Shane Ewen’s research shows that it’s everyone’s concern.

Titans in the landscape

Taking the piss

Council cuts have created public-toilet deserts across the UK, limiting journeys and days out for people whose medical conditions mean toilet access is essential. Campaigner Kevin Crowe highlights the issues.

Seeking the hoarder in literature

As she strives to deepen her understanding of hoarding, Georgie Evans turns to books. But depictions of hoards and hoarders are few and often sparse, except in one surprising place.

The fine line between collecting and hoarding

Being ‘a collector’ is often celebrated but being labelled ‘a hoarder’ can be humiliating, at best. Georgie Evans asks what makes one set of objects a collection and another a hoard.

Butch drag in the builders’ caff

Two men in a café dressed in practical workwear might seem indistinguishable, but closer inspection reveals layers of complex, nuanced identity.

Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

Paris Morgue and a public spectacle of death

Known as the “only free theatre in Paris”, La Morgue was a popular place for the public to view cadavers on display.

Surviving fatness

It took time for LMM to discover that being fat and poor are mutually exclusive. Here she describes resisting fatphobia by being visible and leaning in to the stereotype.

Surviving grief when discussing death is off limits

When Iqra Choudhry’s dad died, she lost her words. Here she explains how finding a way to talk and write about loss has been essential for surviving it.

A portrait of me with my mother

A series of portraits with stand-in mothers helped Camilla Greenwell to process her grief, and then to question whether our photograph albums are ever really honest.

The enduring myth of the mad genius

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

Battling the heteronormativity of sexual health

As a queer, Black women, Mary W is sick of the never-ending hetero-cycle of clinic appointments, where her needs and sexuality are always a surprise to the doctor. She calls for a revolution.

Doris Day blows against

Dodie Bellamy remembers a heady summer watching Doris Day grimace and gust in vintage movies, her expressive exhalations changing her onscreen world with a puff.

Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

Life before assistive technology

When an inherited condition caused Alex Lee’s vision to deteriorate, he began to discover the technologies that would help him navigate the world around him. Here he describes how his life began to change.

On contagion

Reading descriptions of the way humans become infested by parasitic flatworms, Daisy Lafarge experienced painful physical symptoms. Perhaps the very creature she was studying had invaded her body.

Disability in the post-pandemic world

Disabled people have suffered more than most during Covid-19, but there is still a chance to build a kinder society. Dolly Sen explores whether we will come together, or allow more brutal disparities to develop in the worsening recession.

Acting, disableism and inclusive theatre

Deaf theatre director Jenny Sealey discusses inclusivity, community and the resilience of disabled actors.

A virtual view of history

Step inside Anne Frank’s house or explore the galleries in a museum destroyed by fire. VR brings history and art satisfyingly close when we’re unable to get there in person.

A brief history of ventilation

As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.

Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis

Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.