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Stories

  • Article

When a private pee is a public disgrace

The free pee is getting rarer. And the lack of suitably equipped disabled toilets is condemning people to lives cloistered away in their own homes. Discover how toilet access for all is part of an equal society.

  • Article

The origins and meanings of pharmacy symbols

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

  • Article

Booze and bad behaviour

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.

  • Article

Notes upon arrival

In an effort to feel at home back in the country of her birth, poet Bhanu Kapil recognises the small revelations of nature in a chilly UK spring as a way to reconnect.

All stories (25)

Images

  • Saint Leopold: shop sign for St Leopold's pharmacy, Vienna. Oil painting by E. Nacht, 18--.
  • Saint Leopold: shop sign for St Leopold's pharmacy, Vienna. Oil painting by E. Nacht, 18--.
  • An artist before a crowd painting a shop sign. Lithograph by F. Le Villain, 1822, after H. Bellangé.
  • The doorway into a chemist's shop in Shanghai: there is a sign outside written in both English and Chinese. Photograph.
  • Nepal; herdsmen of the Khumbu, 1986. Three herdsmen stop for refreshments at the Shomare Hotel. The sign above the door of this tea shop reads: 'Wel-come to Shomare Hotel', evidence that westerners pass the door en rout to the high mountains.
  • A green neon-lit pharmacy shop sign on the corner of a street with a message in French: 'There are places for protection on every street corner'; with a sterile needle and a condom advertising pharmacies as the first port of call for protection against AIDS; an advertisement by the Ministére du Travail et des Affaires Sociales, L'Assurance Maladie Sécurité Sociale, Ordre National des Pharmacies and CFES. Colour lithograph.
  • An episode in Dombey and son by Charles Dickens: the interior of "The wooden midshipman", a shop in the City of London for navigational instruments; a boy ("Rob the Grinder") is conversing with a pugilist known as "The Game Chicken". Etching by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne).
  • A wig-seller dressing a wig on a stand in his shop; the wig-stands bear the heads of Tory politicians. Wood engraving by W.C.W. after R. Seymour.
  • Several sinister events in a London street. Coloured etching.
  • Several sinister events in a London street. Coloured etching.
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