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51 results
  • Article
  • Article

The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman

| Lalita Kaplish

How the modern world changed the life and reputation of the yogi.

  • Article
  • Article

Performing my disability

| Caroline ButterwickKimberley Burrows

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

  • Article
  • Article

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

| Nazlin BhimaniGergo Varga

Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.

  • Article
  • Article

Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

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

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Inside the Cold War mind

| Martin SixsmithSteven Pocock

Martin Sixsmith explores the competing national psyches of Russia and America, and a world divided between their irreconcilable visions of human nature.

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A nose through Blythe House

| Laura HumphreysKevin Percival

Recently sold and emptied out, Blythe House was once one of the UK’s biggest museum storage facilities. Here, museum worker Laura Humphreys reflects on her relationship with the store’s architecture, objects and aromas.

  • Article
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Shame and the online free-for-all

| Lucia Osborne-CrowleyEduardo Rubio

Lucia Osborne-Crowley looks at how shame manifests online, where public humiliation is common and second chances all too rare.

  • Article
  • Article

Why “crazy cat ladies” are healthier than you may think

| Erica CromptonCamilla Greenwell

Writer Erica Crompton ponders the reasons behind the misogynist “crazy cat lady” trope, and reclaims cat ownership as a positive way to help restore mental equilibrium.

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Duelling doctors

| Russell Moul

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

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Sex work and critical campaigners

| Ella SmithJessa Fairbrother

When campaigners filmed secretly in the club where she worked, exotic dancer Ella Smith felt frightened and degraded. Here she speaks out about the attack on her livelihood.

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  • Article

Designing better mental health wards

| Emily Reynolds

Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.

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Conflicted and confused about lithium

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Covid-19 left Laura Grace Simpkins out of work and living back with her parents. She now had time to restart her research into her medication, but was she mad to continue?

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Mary Bishop and the surveillant gaze

| Rose RuaneMary Bishop

Writer and artist Rose Ruane explores the paintings of Mary Bishop, created during a 30-year stay in a psychiatric hospital, which speak of constant medical surveillance and censorious self-examination.

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The amateur silversmith

| Geraldine Holden

It started as hobby and soon became a passion. Geraldine Holden tells us where the art and science of silver unite.

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Autism assessments and me

| Mayanne SoretHayley Wall

When, as an adult, Mayanne Soret decided to get a formal diagnosis of her autism, she found that the series of assessments had a dishearteningly negative focus, seeming to frame her as a problem.

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Booze and bad behaviour

| Stevyn Colgan

Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.

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How online dating can make us lonely

| Christina Patterson

The packed diary of an internet dater doesn’t necessarily denote fun, companionship and love. Find out what Christina Patterson learned on her internet-dating odyssey.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Temporary chroma key memorials

| A R Hopwood

In this imaginary podcast, artist A R Hopwood creates a scene where he interviews his friend and former collaborator ‘Paul’, who died by suicide in 2019.

  • Article
  • Article

Dying to be in nature

| Matthew PonsfordAndy Merritt

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

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Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

| Anna Faherty

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

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  • Article

Believe yourself better

| A R Hopwood

There’s more to recovery than medication. In future, our unconscious minds could be recruited to put a positive spin on our health problems, helping us feel better faster.

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Remote romance and the common cold

| Elena CarterThomas S G Farnetti

Getting creatively romantic due to a virus sounds all too contemporary, but our archives show what socially distanced seduction looked like seven decades ago.

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Defying deafness through music

| Danny LaneSteven Pocock

Did you know that Beethoven’s profession meant he was ashamed to admit to being deaf? Find out how similar prejudices persist today and how our writer is helping to break them down.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”

Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.

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  • Article

Guerrilla public health

| Harry Shapiro

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.