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19 results
  • Article
  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

| Cassidy Phillips

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

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The power of unicorns

| Muriel Bailly

Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.

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Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.

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Devilry and doom in 1666

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

Disastrous events and a significant combination of numbers signalled the end – or perhaps a new beginning – in 1666. But for some, this feverish period fuelled unprecedented inventiveness and development.

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Deciding a date for the end of the world

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

When will the world end? Charlotte Sleigh explores how our obsession with dates and dramatic imaginings of the end can distract us from the dangers slowly creeping up on us.

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The conditional child

| Deanna Fei

Deanna Fei asks what it means to sustain a life, drawing on her own experience of having a premature baby as well as an 18th-century essay.

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The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

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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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Western magic’s fascination with the foreigner

| Shelley Angelie SaggarThomas S G Farnetti

Could modern magic shows be perpetuating damaging cultural stereotypes? Shelley Saggar shows how ‘exotic’ costumes and imagery are far from harmless fun.

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The origins and meanings of pharmacy symbols

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

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Spiritual joy

| Dr Emma PercyJem Clancy

Spiritual joy can be a source of strength. Like the optimistic Pollyanna, there’s a lot to be said for finding reasons to rejoice, even in adversity.

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Would you like to buy a unicorn?

| Cassidy Phillips

The story behind why somebody tried to sell Henry Wellcome a unicorn head in 1928.

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Shame, condemnation and conscience

| Lucia Osborne-CrowleyEduardo Rubio

Where does shame comes from and what fuels it? Lucia Osborne-Crowley explores audience, gender and the difference between shame and guilt, asking if either can ever be useful.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Tree of life

| Ross MacFarlane

Ross MacFarlane traces the ideas around Charles Darwin’s famous ‘Tree of Life’, both back to the Bible, and forward to its appropriation by the proponents of eugenics.

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Eels and feels

| Ruth Garde

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

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Why are women more willing donors than men?

| Hannah PartosThomas S G Farnetti

Why is there a gender imbalance when it comes to the donation of organs, blood and tissue, and what can be done about it?

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Uncovering experiences of dementia

| Millie van der Byl Williams

Focusing on three 19th-century women’s case notes, Millie van der Byl Williams explores how our definition of dementia has changed.

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Book design, dissected

| Gwendolyn Smith

Gwen Smith talks to art director Peter Dyer about imagery, colour, type and staying true to the pages within.

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When self-deception becomes global hoax

| A R Hopwood

Being deceived isn’t always a case of believing someone else’s lie. Experiments have shown that many of us can be manipulated into accepting our own fictions as true.