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47 results
  • Article
  • Article

Dial ‘S’ for sex

| Dr Kate Lister

In pre-internet days, phone boxes became a patchwork of ‘tart cards’ offering sexual services. Find out about the clandestine world they hint at.

  • Article
  • Article

Homes for the hives of industry

| Emily Sargent

By building workers’ villages, industry titans demonstrated both philanthropy and control. Employees’ health improved, while rulebooks told them how to live ideal lives.

  • Article
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How slums make people sick

| Emily Sargent

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Meet the climate emergency

| Gwendolyn SmithThomas S G Farnetti

Find out what led Yinka Shonibare to create the compelling artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’.

  • Article
  • Article

Performance art, frozen in time

| Elissavet NtouliaKathleen Arundell

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

An insider’s view of Play Well

| Gwendolyn SmithSteven Pocock

Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.

  • Article
  • Article

Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances

| Kristen den Hartog

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

Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug

| Douglas SmallBenjamin Gilbert

Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.

  • Article
  • Article

Two health centres, two ideologies

| Emily Sargent

Two futuristic, light-filled buildings aimed to bring forward-looking healthcare to city dwellers. But the principles behind each were very different.

  • Article
  • Article

Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red

| Nicola CookLoesja Vigour

Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.

  • Article
  • Article

There’s more to gingerbread than ginger

| Mary-Anne Boermans

‘Bake-Off’ finalist Mary-Anne Boermans treats us to the warm and enticing pleasures of gingerbread over centuries.

  • Article
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The anatomy of a brain dissection

| Moheb CostandiBenjamin Gilbert

Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.

  • Article
  • Article

Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination

| Mark Honigsbaum

The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.

  • Article
  • Article

Audrey and her family

| Elena Carter

In working on Audrey Amiss’s archive, Elena is getting closer to understanding her. But the way her niece and nephew remember Audrey adds essential detail to the picture.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of Living with Buildings curator, Emily Sargent

| Gwendolyn Smith

Curator Emily Sargent reveals why council estates and a Finnish TB sanatorium were chosen for the ‘Living with Buildings’ exhibition.

  • Article
  • Article

Sick of being lonely

| Thom James

When his relationship ended, Thom James first withdrew from the world, then began to suffer from illnesses with no apparent physical cause.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

You know the drill

| Richard Barnett

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

  • Article
  • Article

Equality in genetics

| Sasha HenriquesTinuke Fagborun

Genetic counsellor Sasha Henriques harnessed her energy and resolve to tackle the racial biases she saw in her profession – with positive and promising results.

  • Article
  • Article

The complex longing for home

| Gail TolleyMaria Rivans

It could be mild, an almost poetic longing. Or it could be visceral, deep, an overwhelming feeling that eats into your everyday life. Come with Gail Tolley as she introduces a deep dive into homesickness.

  • Article
  • Article

This is a MOOD

| Kate WilkinsonLaurindo Feliciano

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.

  • Article
  • Article

Confusion, guilt, and the battle to breastfeed

| Joanna WolfarthRosie Barnes

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

  • Article
  • Article

The life and death of Tamagotchi and the virtual pet

| Jenna Jovi

Discover how the 1990s craze for Tamagotchis became a flood of robotic and virtual pets, sending their owners on an emotional rollercoaster ride.