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When wounds replace words

For the many thousands of refugees waiting in Greece, the process to establish the truth of their tragic personal histories is often extremely upsetting. But a group of medics and legal workers is working together to make the system more humane.

Language

Our bodies convey stories through an alphabet of shrugs and shoulder poems. If your shoulders could talk, what poems would they tell?

Book design, dissected

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

Daria Martin on ‘Sensorium Tests’ and ‘At the Threshold’

Fashion for an unruly body

One weekend, just before an operation to correct her scoliosis, Rosalind Jana stopped trying to hide her body. Read how those two days helped her step into the future.

Living with early onset Parkinson’s

Ten years ago, three little words changed Pete Langman’s world.

Performing my disability

Caroline Butterwick explores the idea of disability as performative, and the pressure to act out what we think others expect.

Between two summers

As Michael Malay tends his allotment, absorbing all the sensations of his surroundings, he finds the repetition of work calms the mind.

A dispatch from the frontiers of man and machine

Harry Parker’s life changed overnight when he stepped on a bomb and lost his legs. He argues that being an amputee doesn’t make him an outlier; we are all hybrid.

On body horror and growing up strange

A young child’s unusual feelings, reactions and assertions are routinely dismissed by adults. Find out how manga horror stories became a source of strength, and helped them trust their adult body.

Lindsey Fitzharris’s prescription for writing

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘The Butchering Art’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

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.

A woman in her wilderness of things

Even though her home was overwhelmed with stuff, Georgie Evans’s grandma couldn’t stop buying things. In this series, Georgie delves into hoarding, and attempts to make sense of her grandma’s behaviour.

Dangers inside and out

Eimear McBride reflects on the deadly consequences of misogyny in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard and argues why advising women to simply “stay indoors” is wrong.

A history of sex for sale

Kate Lister’s cultural history of the sex trade puts sex workers centre stage. In this extract, she argues why the way we write, think and talk about sex work matters.

Lustmord and the three perspectives of murder

Artist Jenny Holzer's work shines a light on the three perspectives of sexual murder: the victim, the perpetrator and the observer.

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.

Trading breastmilk with men

When Alev Scott advertised her milk for sale, she was inundated with messages from men keen to satisfy sexual fetishes. Here she finds out who they are, and why women sell to them.

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.

To write in golden photographs

When Rachel Genn’s brother disappeared, a newspaper article led the family to his bedside. But the accident he’d barely survived was not to be the last tragedy in his life.

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.

My illness made me an activist, but now I’m exhausted

Emily Bashforth’s illness made her an advocate but now she’s battling burnout. She argues why we all need to be mental health activists, not just those with lived experience.

The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.

Building a dream in the garden suburbs

In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.

Getting under the skin

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.