What next?
After nearly three extraordinary years my Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowship is finally coming to an end. Sad as I am to be leaving this remarkable programme, it’s a great pleasure to be joining the … Continue reading
Anatomy of the City 14 – The Royal Naval Hospital and the Dreadnought Hospital
Christopher Wren’s Royal Naval Hospital is the centrepiece of maritime Greenwich, but – like many of London’s grand historic buildings – it finds its roots in royal one-upmanship. When Charles … Continue reading
Anatomy of the City 13 – Anarchists & spies in Greenwich
‘A screaming comes across the sky’ – the first line of Thomas Pynchon’s celebrated novel Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon’s story begins at the foot of Observatory Hill in Greenwich at the … Continue reading
Anatomy of the City 12 – Deptford Creek
These days it may not be much to look at, but this stretch of riverside is one of the most important places in English history. The ancient village of Deptford … Continue reading
‘The Sick Rose’
As readers of this blog will surely know, the Wellcome Library and Wellcome Images hold one of the world’s great archives of historical medical and scientific images. Over the next … Continue reading
Sick City Talks 9 – ‘Pocket Horizon’
Pocket Horizon is an anthology of new poems inspired by objects in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge and Wellcome Collection in London. Our first workshop took place at the Whipple Museum … Continue reading
Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence
I’m delighted to say that Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy has invited me to be scholar in residence at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn for April 2014. Having been … Continue reading
‘This Parliament of Monsters’: London’s spectacular fairs
This is the text of a talk I gave on 7 September at ‘Reclaiming Spectacle’ – the two-day finale of the 2013 Congress for Curious People. There’s a short bibliography … Continue reading
The History Social – 5 Sept 2013
The Ministry of Curiosity and the Sick City Project invite you to the next History Social – a regular chance to meet, make new friends and contacts, and talk about … Continue reading
Anatomy of the City 11 – The London Lock Hospital
In the mid-nineteenth century the corner of Dean Street and Bateman Street in Soho was home to the largest venereal disease hospital in the city – the London Lock Hospital. … Continue reading
Sick City Project 