Home Stories

Hidden Bodies

For this series Bidisha invited five writers to share experiences that they may not have brought to light before, inspired by an item within Wellcome Collection. Through this, she wanted to make a connection between the past and the present, between a stored object and a living reality. The resulting stories, though deeply personal, reveal themes that affect many people’s lives: birth, motherhood, sexuality, sickness, grief – and healing. 

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Photographic black and white, head and shoulders portrait of Bidisha SK Mamata.
Bidisha SK Mamata, Thomas SG Farnetti. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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The secret hystery of a womb

A Renaissance image of a caesarean section inspired Anna Blundy to recount the story of a hidden, perhaps mysterious part of her body.

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The blood notebooks

Novelist Rupert Thomson explores his unusual behaviour during a time of self-imposed isolation.

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The leukaemia diagnosis I didn’t see coming

Treatment for leukaemia kept journalist Hannah Partos in isolation, like the female prisoner whose image inspired her to write this piece.

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The conditional child

Deanna Fei asks what it means to sustain a life, drawing on her own experience of having a premature baby as well as an 18th-century essay.

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The intermediate life of spirits

Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.