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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Clues in the Wellcome Library
We started 2010 with a post on material from our collections which had been opened under the Data Protection Act, on the case of Charles H.M. Kerr: from our records, patient of Manor House Asylum in Chiswick, but identified –… Continue reading
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A rose in Bloomsbury
Oh, to be in England in the summertime. Fans of the Chelsea Flower show and all things horticultural may want to see some ‘living history’. From the library, take a stroll to the nearest patch of grass – Gordon Square… Continue reading
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Announcement of Wellcome Book Prize Judges
Announced today is the new panel of judges for the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize. Chaired by Clive Anderson, former barrister, comedy writer and presenter, the panel includes writer and former Man Booker judge Maggie Gee; writer, professor and former… Continue reading
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‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’
We recently wrote on this blog on the life – and afterlife – of Henrietta Lacks, illustrating our post with one of the images of HeLa cells to be found on Wellcome Images. Those intrigued by the post, may be… Continue reading
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‘Theories and Methods: Literature, Science and Medicine’
The Wellcome Library is a participant in an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) doctoral training programme ‘Theories and Methods: Literature, Science and Medicine‘, which is running from 2009-2011. The second event in this programme will take place from 25-27th… Continue reading
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Death of a novelist
Eighty-five years ago today, on August 3rd 1924, the novelist Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack at his home in Kent. Conrad’s narratives are slippery constructions, with lavish use of fractured timescales, unreliable narrators and indirect speech. Their indirection… Continue reading
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The Atrocity Exhibition and the Wellcome Library
Obituaries of J.G. Ballard published in the last week have all mentioned the writer’s two years studying medicine at Cambridge, a period in which he dissected the physical body as prelude, he hoped, for a career in psychiatry. As it… Continue reading
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New evening events in the Wellcome Library
In April, the Library will launch a new strand of events, held in the Reading Room, to explore how authors have drawn on the resources of the Wellcome Library to inspire and inform their writing. The Ghosts of Netley, Thursday… Continue reading
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Francis Crick and science fiction
In the wake of the ‘Frankenstein science’ fears stirred up by last year’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, startling evidence has come to light of a strange hybrid organism genetically engineered in the USA. A newly-catalogued file in Francis Crick’s… Continue reading
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Notorious decadent sighted in the Wellcome Library
Newly added to the online catalogue of Wellcome Library archives: two letters by the French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907). Huysmans is most famous for the novel À rebours (Against Nature), a landmark of the decadent movement whose millionaire “hero”, Des… Continue reading