- Book extract
- Book extract
“Above resistant pavements, I floated”
In this extract from ‘Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts’, walk with Iain Sinclair through the streets of London.
- Article
- Article
A head apart from the body
We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Sockets and stumps
Historian Emily Mayhew has met soldiers who have survived the seemingly unsurvivable. Here, she explores the part prosthetics play in the process of military rehabilitation.
- Article
- Article
How I escaped my anxiety and depression through architecture and poetry
Social anxiety led him to introversion and silence. The brutalist architecture of London’s Barbican Estate inspired his liberation in poetry.
- Article
- Article
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.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Pum Dunbar’s living lessons
Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Dancing for joy
Dancing is a mood enhancer, it increases social bonding and it improves creativity. Maybe you really can dance all your troubles away.
- Article
- Article
A journey through slime
Did you know that slime cells signal to each other and seek out multiple partners? Welcome to bath time with Abi Palmer – and some revolting yet awe-inspiring grey slime.
- Article
- Article
The first seizure
Historian Aparna Nair had her first seizure when she was 11. Here she recalls that first time, and how other people’s reactions are sometimes the most disturbing part about having a seizure.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The psychology of Ouija
Explore the science behind table tilting and Ouija boards, and discover how the unscrupulous still make money from exploiting the ‘ideomotor’ effect.
- Article
- Article
Witches
Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.
- Article
- Article
Healing through ink
Taking an approach learned from his OCD treatment, Josh Weeks faced his fear of getting tattoos, and embraced inking as part of the healing process.
- Article
- Article
In the tracks of Derek Jarman’s tears
Researcher E K Myerson shares her moving encounters with the personal papers of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman.
- Article
- Article
姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions
Nina Mingya Powles felt adrift in the UK, living thousands of miles from home. But nurturing familiar tastes and smells in her tiny balcony garden helped her roots begin to grow.
- Book extract
- Book extract
You, a thousand years ago
Jack Hartnell argues that, if we were transported into the medieval past, we’d find ourselves somewhere different yet strangely familiar.
- Article
- Article
Air of threat
Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.
- Article
- Article
Performance art, frozen in time
For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.
- Article
- Article
Searching for a place to call home
Wherever she’s lived, Tanya Perdikou has rarely felt at home, and numerous moves have perpetuated a sense of disconnection. But signs from nature offer powerful moments of connection.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Why make-believe matters
Michael Rosen explores the point of play, and reveals why we should all do a little more daydreaming.
- Interview
- Interview
Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies
Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.
- Article
- Article
Can isolation lead to manipulation?
Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.
- Article
- Article
Ginger’s role in cures and courtroom battles
Some people will use a dose of ginger to help with hangovers – but it hasn’t always been a friend to the thirsty.
- Article
- Article
The house of Joan
The longueurs of hospital stays and enforced inactivity were the spur to Joan’s precise tailoring skills and flamboyant creations, all to the benefit of her fashion-loving sisters.
- Article
- Article
Bubbles of history
Since the 1960s, scientists have been able to study the air from past centuries by analysing particles in Arctic ice samples. But as the polar ice melts, the future of this research is changing.