cholera
Starving street urchins sell their sisters in the chaos of Naples, 1944
When the Allies arrived in the city in the wake of the German retreat, they were shocked by the child prostitutes, shady commerce and downright miseria
Introducing Tchaikovsky the merry scamp
Rescuing the composer from his tortured image, Simon Morrison presents him as a sort of Till Eulenspiegel character, laughing and pranking his way through life
After the Flood: There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak, reviewed
Water – essential to life and civilisation, but also a potentially destructive force – is the theme linking three disparate strands in Shafak’s magnificent new novel
Death was everywhere for the Victorians, but it was never commonplace
In a society obsessed with the trappings of grief, funerals were often elaborate occasions, with commemorative medals struck and strict rules applied to the period of mourning
Why has medicine been so slow to improve over the centuries?
Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…
Africa’s invisible epidemics
Africa ‘Ah, Africa,’ the French scientist sighed contentedly. This was 1995 and all around us was an Ebola epidemic…
The poetry of sewers
‘Welcome,’ says our guide Stuart Bellehewe, with an imperious sweep of his arm, ‘to the cathedral of shit.’ Before us…
High life
After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over…
