- Article
- Article
Guerrilla public health
From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.
- Article
- Article
The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
- Article
- Article
Designing death in the virtual city
Danger and death are fun when they’re virtual – and when they incorporate realistic elements. Now the tables are turned, as urban planners learn from game environments.
- Article
- Article
Two health centres, two ideologies
Two futuristic, light-filled buildings aimed to bring forward-looking healthcare to city dwellers. But the principles behind each were very different.
- Article
- Article
Natural eating in Jamaica and the Caribbean
Riaz Phillips is passionate about the Jamaican food he grew up with and plant-based Caribbean food he came to later, like roti, baiganee and vegan stews and curries. Here he explores the origins and surging popularity of these natural ‘health foods’.
- Article
- Article
The family food of a kebab van man
Melek Erdal celebrates the physical and mental resilience of her father Yusuf, forged by isolation and dislocation, and reinforced by the distinctive cuisine of his home country, Turkey.
- Article
- Article
Graveyards as green getaways
Stressed city dwellers have been visiting cemeteries in greater numbers since the start of the pandemic. Discover how, despite the constant reminders of death, graveyards bring visitors a sense of renewal.
- Article
- Article
Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances
In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.
- Article
- Article
Medics and the bomb
Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.
- 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.
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- Article
Milk trails round Euston
Where cows once grazed near Wellcome Collection in London, baristas now froth their milk. Esther Leslie uncovers Euston’s dairy-based urban history.
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- Article
Medics, migration and the NHS
In the 1960s the NHS became Britain’s biggest employer. So to help fill all those jobs, the government brought in thousands of workers from abroad.
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- Article
The tower in fiction, film and life
The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.
- Long read
- Long read
Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction
Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.
- Article
- Article
Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination
The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.
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- Article
Delusional recycling and the problem with plastic
Many of us are guilty of wishful thinking when it comes to our rubbish. Arianne Shahvisi exposes shaky recycling infrastructure and overseas dumping, arguing for an end to waste colonialism.
- Long read
- Long read
Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard
Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations
Kate Summerscale explores the history of our anxieties and compulsions, and the new phobias and manias that are always emerging.
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- Article
When everyday environments become anxious spaces
Social anxiety disorder isolates those who experience it. Part of the solution is to design public spaces with mental health in mind.
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The significance of safe spaces as refuges from racism
Beer writer David Jesudason discusses the impact racism has had on his mental health, and the consolation offered by pubs that feel truly safe.
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- Article
A bad atmosphere in the Balkans
The citizens of Belgrade, one of the most polluted cities in Europe, are finally pushing back against the polluters, whose activities they’ve been encouraged to accept.
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- Article
This is a MOOD
Adults might sometimes dismiss teenagers’ ‘moodiness’, but adolescence is a time of complex shifts in brain and body, which are intricately bound up with fluctuating feelings.
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- Article
The cook who became a pariah
New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.
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- Article
How light pollution affects our circadian rhythms
Too much of the wrong sort of light can send our natural cycles off-kilter – is city life messing with your circadian rhythm?
- Long read
- Long read
Healthy scepticism
Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.