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Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus / Happy St David’s Day
In honour of St David’s Day, the national day of Wales, today we focus on one of the Library’s Welsh holdings. One of the fascinations of archive material in particular is the way that it makes things specific: takes large,… Continue reading
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Top archives of 2011
Following last year’s annual archive popularity contest it may be interesting to look at the comparable figures for 2011. This was a year of healthily increasing interest in our collections with rising reader numbers and numbers of productions. It was also gratifying… Continue reading
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Alan Turing and the Ratio Club
Last week Alan Turing (1912-1954) was in the news when the government rejected an e-petition to grant him a posthumous pardon for his conviction for ‘gross indecency’ in 1952, as a result of which he was subjected to debilitating experimental… Continue reading
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Turn on, tune, in…investigate your subconscious?
On 19th April 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally got some of the chemical he was synthesising onto his fingers, resulting in what he described as a dreamlike intoxication that lasted for two hours. His employers, Sandoz pharmaceuticals were quick… Continue reading
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Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens
There can’t be many of our readers in the UK who are still unaware that this year is Charles Dickens’ bicentenary. 2012 sees exhibitions in Portsmouth, Dickens’ birthplace; in London, the city with which he is most closely associated; in… Continue reading
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Records of voluntary organisations
It is good to see that the Voluntary Action History Society’s drive to raise awareness of, and provision for, the necessity to preserve the archives of this important sector, is receiving attention: Wanted: Champions to safeguard the archives of our… Continue reading
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Private Minds, Public Collections
As custodians of major archive collections relating to mental health, including patient records from several private hospitals, the Wellcome Library is particularly interested in the issues raised when encouraging public access to, and engagement with, such potentially sensitive material.… Continue reading
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Fifty years in clinical and human genetics
One of the Wellcome Trust’s challenge areas is maximising the health benefits of genetics and genomics. Relating directly to this are the personal papers of Professor George Robert Fraser, which are now available for consultation in the Wellcome Library. George… Continue reading
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New Labour’s moral mazes
One August evening in Bolton in 1997 five year-old Dillon Hull was accidentally shot dead by a man seeking to recover a heroin debt from Dillon’s father. Dr Brian Iddon, recently-elected Labour MP for Bolton South East, gave an interview… Continue reading
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If not here, where?
It was the proud boast of London’s Windmill Theatre that “We never closed”: that throughout the Blitz, as bombs rained down on London, the theatre continued to provide nude tableaux for the entertainment of lonely servicemen and their like. The… Continue reading