‘Our oath’ short film, 2015, directed by Laura Finney I was intrigued and moved by ‘The trials of Spring’, a documentary film depicting the fight of Arab women during the Spring Revolutions in 2010 (http://www.trialsofspring.com/). The film portrays heart-felt human stories of women from Syria, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt. Filming took place […]
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THIS IS A VOICE at Wellcome Collection reviewed
‘His Masters Voice’. Painting by Francis Barraud, 1919. Credit:Courtesy of the EMI Group Archive Trust THIS IS A VOICE Wellcome Collection, 14 April – 31 July 2016 Reviewed by Steven Kenny Approaching the exhibition entrance of THIS IS A VOICE at the Wellcome Collection, it is easy to think the voice is treated […]
Book review: Social Class in the 21st Century
Mike Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century, Pelican, 2015 Reviewed by Jacob King, Medical Student. You may have heard about the Great British Class Survey, you may have even completed the Great British Class survey (GBCS) or tried their online Class Calculator. In 2015 Mike Savage and colleagues summarised the findings of […]
The Reading Room: The Violet Hour – Great Writers at the End
Katie Roiphe. The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End. Virago, 2016 Reviewed by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York A central premise of Katie Roiphe’s The Violet Hour is that the awareness of approaching death is a milestone we all will face at some time […]
CHCI Health Humanities Summer Institute 2016
Sunday 26 – Monday 27 June 2016, 10.00 CHCI Health Humanities Summer Institute 2016 Health Humanities Now Anatomy Lecture Theatre & Museum, King’s Building, Strand Campus 2 day Conference which aims to gather scholars and practitioners from all over the world in the burgeoning field of the health humanities. By showcasing some of […]
First impressions only happen once
Fergus Shanahan Eyes smiling, face beaming, the porter rose from his stool to greet arrivals at the cancer centre, each nervously hesitant, staying close to a supporting loved one. With the confidence of a man who enjoyed being good at his job, he paused for those needing directions, reassured us that we were […]
The Reading Room: Reading for Health
Erika Wright. Reading for Health: Medical Narratives and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Dr Jane Darcy, Department of English, University College London Erika Wright begins Reading for Health with a timely reminder for Victorianists, quoting Ruskin’s argument about the dangerous temptation of the ‘phenomenon of the sick-room’ for […]
The Screening Room: old age, loneliness and cinema
Loneliness, and Belonging in the Age of Photoshop Short film, directed by Amjad Abu Ala Review by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York There is a world of life portrayed in the few brief minutes of the poignant but joyous short film, ‘Studio’, by Amjad Abu Ala (in Arabic […]
The Reading Room: Salka Valka
Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness: she needs to be alone Reviewed by David S. Baldwin, Professor of Psychiatry Clinical and Experimental Sciences Academic Unit Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Email: dsb1@soton.ac.uk Born in Reykjavík in April 1902, Halldór Guðjónsson (he changed his name to Halldór Kiljan Laxness in 1923) […]
The Reading Room: The Other Side of Silence
The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression by Linda Gask. Vie Books, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Lilian Hickey There is a shocking, but humane and tender poetry in George Eliot’s lines in Middlemarch which refer to the deafening ‘roar’ of life that might lie ‘on the other side of silence’ in our […]