2022

Back to London. Glad to have tried life in Edinburgh for a couple of years, but the lockdowns began three weeks after we moved, and it just didn’t work out. I do miss the coastline and the hills around the Forth, but it’s a joy to be in London again (which still feels like home).

Having had a little breathing space after Wherever, it’s time to start thinking seriously about another book. I have about a third of the next poetry collection, a heap of notes for a history book that may or may not happen, and the outline of something that might turn into a long poem or a novella. More soon, but not very soon.

Biggest thrill of 2022 so far: getting to read some of the ‘Hades’ section of Ulysses, as part of Shakespeare & Co’s ‘unabridged, polyphonic, and diverse celebration of Joyce’s Modernist masterwork’, marking a century since Sylvia Beach published Ulysses. Exquisite fun, and brought me closer to Ulysses than I’d been in years. (And, for the record, being sandwiched between Nicholson Baker and Amy Sackville is as exhilarating as you’d think it is.) I led a guided walk along the River Fleet for students from the College of Charleston. And I had a lively conversation on the history of dentistry with Zing Tsjeng on Spotify’s ‘Shot and Chaser’ – a chance to revisit The Smile Stealers, and to answer the surprisingly tough question of when we began to brush our teeth.

2021

My next poetry book – Wherever We Are When We Come To The End – is out now with Valley Press. Wherever digs into the form and the language of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to tell the extraordinary tale of its creation on the Eastern Front in the First World War.

Sarah Bakewell calls Wherever ‘ingenious, devastating, and filled with emotional riches.’ Emily Mayhew says I’ve ‘opened a new window on the Great War, that reveals its territorial encounters of precision, humanity and sacrifice’. Chris McCabe thinks that ‘through imagery as deep and tannin-hued as Mercian Hymns, Barnett pulls off the impossible: revealing the still pulsing consciousness of the greatest mind in analytic philosophy.’

I’ve been trying to write this, one way and another, since I first encountered the Tractatus as a schoolboy. More than a decade of reading, writing, performing and rewriting has taken me places I never knew poetry or history could go.

You can order Wherever from Valley Press and Amazon, and an Audible audiobook is available via Amazon or Audible. Daniel Kramb at FMcM Associates is handling events and publicity.

Hotel and RTE Culture have published extracts from the book. Dan Fuller interviewed me for Burley Fisher Books’ Isolation Station podcast, and and I discussed Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, house parties and holy fools with Luke Kennard and Adam Biles on the Shakespeare & Co podcast. I read from the poem on RTE Radio 1’s Arena and David Collard’s Carthorse Orchestra. Buzz Magazine and Review 31 gave Wherever enthusiastic reviews, Jack Solloway interviewed me for The London Magazine, and I wrote a short essay on Wittgenstein, war, and silence for Lit Hub. I read from Wherever, and debated the Tractatus as poetry with James C Klagge and Duncan Richter, at the British Wittgenstein Society‘s Tractatus Centenary Lecture (video here), and the Society have kindly made me a member. David Collard chose Wherever as one of his poetry books of the year for 2021.

FMcM have produced a gorgeous series of short films on the book – an introduction, a reading and a short reflection. 

I’m hoping to do (and, after a year of lockdown, so looking forward to) some in-person readings and discussions – details will be here and on Twitter. An audiobook of my first poetry collection, Seahouses, recorded in my house in Edinburgh during the lockdown, is now available via Valley Press, Amazon or Audible.

Winter / spring 2020

The big news: after 22 years in London I’ve moved to Edinburgh. A change of air, a change of politics, a chance to get up into the hills more often and, as I turn forty this year, to make a new life in a new city with my wife. And an opportunity, in this year of arrivals and departures, to look ahead to the second half of my life and what I want it to include.

Over the last few years I’ve been steadily losing my enthusiasm for the history of science and medicine. Partly this is just a sense of overfamiliarity with the territory, after nearly two decades of learning, teaching & writing it; partly, also, the embattled state of so many humanities departments and programmes; and partly and most painfully the loss of Michael Neve. Until Michael died I don’t think I quite realised how much of my pleasure in the subject came from discussing it with him.

So I’ve been stepping down from my various academic & public-engagement responsibilities. If interesting opportunities come up I’ll take them, and of course I’ll be glad to talk about my books & projects with anyone who wants to hear. But I want to explore other fields of history and other forms of writing, especially poetry. My first step in this direction will be appearing early next year, I hope. More soon.

Michael Neve

I was heartbroken to hear of the death of Michael Neve on 9 October, after a long, difficult illness he bore with wit and patience. Michael was one of the most widely-loved people I’ve met, and I send my condolences to anyone mourning him, especially to his daughters. Others will, I’m sure, be compiling formal obituaries: Mike Jay’s memoir in the London Review of Books is superb, as was Trevor Turner’s eulogy at Michael’s funeral. Here I just want to remember and pay tribute to a teacher, colleague and friend who changed my life.

George Harrison said that the Beatles saved the world from boredom, and that is just what Michael did for so many of those who knew him. His lectures at UCL in the 1990s and 2000s – often given from a notecard with seven or eight words on it – were performances of improvisational genius. He taught in the democratic, come-one-come-all spirit of his beloved Grateful Dead, by turns lofty and penetrating, scabrous and lapidary, and his classes grew and grew as students discovered what this remarkable man was up to.

Lunch with Michael – a pleasure I enjoyed at least once a month for the best part of twenty years – was the best kind of tutorial, beginning with a martini and ending with the gift of a book or a tip for the cinema. Through him I encountered Geoffrey Hill, Basil Bunting, Anne Carson, Thom Gunn, William Hazlitt, John Berryman, Christopher Ricks, Denise Riley, Frederick Seidel (Michael’s particular idol), Barbara Everett and JH Prynne, to pick a few names off the shelf closest to my desk. Those first few afternoons in St John or Kensington Place or Lutyens were their own private and luminous kind of happiness; they gave me, a shy late-teenager nursing what seemed hopeless ambitions, a sense of what an intellectual life might be, and I’ve been searching for my own way back to that secret garden ever since.

As a companion Michael was exuberant, polyrhythmical, and occasionally too much; as a friend he was extraordinarily generous and loyal. He made a philosophy of the gift good editors are said to possess: whatever the difficulty – in writing, in teaching, in poetry, in the most ordinary questions of life – he would never force an answer on you, but guide you, sometimes with superhuman patience, towards your own conclusion. Whatever happened, joyful or sad, absurd or infuriating, he would want to hear about it, and would know just what to say. He was the kindest and the most lovable of men, and I miss him terribly.

In the second half of his life Michael spent much more time teaching than writing, but his contributions to the London Review of Books capture that pungent, impudent voice at the apex of its power. I’ll end with my favourite passage, from an essay on two of his favourite subjects, psychoanalysis and psychedelics, published in October 1983 – a sharp, unsentimental insight, for many years pinned up over my computer, into what Michael would never have called the process of writing.

‘Romanticism takes up the vital idea that there are times when the self has run out of insights, when the speaking voice is failing, or just talking nonsense. And this admission, that some line of thought is just wrong, or played out, or insufficiently imaginative to warrant attention, brings with it the chance of stopping, of taking a break, without retribution. Of biding, not wasting, one’s time. Of the right to silence, and the absolute importance of being able to change one’s mind or be ambivalent, or, more likely, of having nothing to say.’

Autumn / winter 2019

I’ve been revising the manuscript of my next poetry book; more on this soon. I read an extract, along with poems from my first collection Seahouses and a few new poems, at the Nairn Book & Arts Festival. Thanks to all who came along & gave it such an enthusiastic reception.

On Sun 13th Oct, at 1pm in the Brompton Cemetery Chapel, I’ll be talking about ‘The Last Trump: Christian Apocalypses from the Reformation to the Rapture’, as part of the always-apocalyptic London Month of the Dead. Details & tickets here.

Delighted to learn that Imaginist Press are releasing Chinese-language editions of the first two books in my ‘Illogy’ – The Sick Rose and Crucial Interventions – with the third book, The Smile Stealers, in the pipeline. I spent half a day filming a short promo for Imaginist, and will put more details up here when I get them. It’s a tremendous thrill to be making my debut in one of the world’s most widely-read languages; nĭ hăo to my new readers.

When I move to Edinburgh later this year I’ll be retiring my guided walks – twenty different routes over (I think) fifteen years, and getting on for five hundred performances, in association with Wellcome Collection, the Museum of London, the Bloomsbury Festival, the Queen’s Gallery, the British Science Festival, UCL Medical School, Imperial College Medical School, Regent’s College, ACCENT International, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and many schools, colleges, and private groups. Thanks to everyone who’s commissioned them, booked them, and joined me to explore life, death, health, disease and the body in London’s history. It really has been one of the great pleasures of the last decade.

Otherwise, keeping my head down & writing, mostly: I’ve been keeping up my ‘Case Histories’ column in the Lancet with (so far this year) entries on cholera, influenza, Alzheimer’s, depression, acute myocardial infarction, and type 2 diabetes.

Spring / summer 2019

Delighted to learn that Imaginist Press are releasing Chinese-language editions of the first two books in my ‘Illogy’ – The Sick Rose and Crucial Interventions – with the third book, The Smile Stealers, in the pipeline. I spent half a day filming a short promo for Imaginist, and will put more details up here when I get them. It’s a tremendous thrill to be making my debut in one of the world’s most widely-read languages; nĭ hăo to my new readers.

When I move to Edinburgh later this year I’ll be retiring my guided walks – twenty different routes over (I think) fifteen years, and getting on for five hundred performances, in association with Wellcome Collection, the Museum of London, the Bloomsbury Festival, the Queen’s Gallery, the British Science Festival, UCL Medical School, Imperial College Medical School, Regent’s College, ACCENT International, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and many schools, colleges, and private groups. Thanks to everyone who’s commissioned them, booked them, and joined me to explore life, death, health, disease and the body in London’s history. It really has been one of the great pleasures of the last decade.

I’m spending much of the summer in Oxford, teaching the history of evolutionary theory on the Exeter College Summer Programme. Otherwise, keeping my head down & writing, mostly: I’ve been keeping up my ‘Case Histories’ column in the Lancet with (so far this year) entries on cholera, influenza, Alzheimer’s, depression, and acute myocardial infarction. The Lancet also commissioned me to write an obituary for Leonardo da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death, and an Art of Medicine essay on Enlightenment dentistry. And I’m editing the manuscript of my next poetry book – the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first collection.

What else? I gave a talk on ‘The End of London: Apocalypse in the Imperial Metropolis’, at Salon for the City in the Westminster Arts Library. Ivan Wise interviewed me for his delightful ‘Better Known’ podcast, in which I chose (amongst other things) kedgeree, Simon Munnery, and Russell Hoban’s Pilgermann. Rony Robinson asked me about the history of gin on his BBC Sheffield radio show. I discussed the history of dentistry with Flora Lichtman for an episode of the Every Little Thing podcast. And a group of students from Northeastern University interviewed me about the history of gin in London for a short film they’re making.

Very many thanks to my former student Isabella Cuan for the excellent new author photos.

Autumn / winter 2018-19

After a summer teaching on the Exeter College Summer Programme in Oxford, and a bewilderingly lovely honeymoon on the Orient Express, I’m back to work on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly & literary comfort zone.

As I go, I’m taking great pleasure in looking back over the now-complete Sick Rose ‘illogy’, produced in collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson. Fortean Times, who’ve given all three volumes splendid reviews, summed it up beautifully: ‘[all three books] are packed with fascinating facts and anecdotes, and profusely illustrated with images that’ll make you squirm. They’ve been consistently excellent as well as intellectual and aesthetic delights.’ I spoke about The Sick Rose on 12 Sept at the Nairn Book & Arts Festival and, as I write this, I’ve just received a parcel from Thames & Hudson containing four new translations, pictured below.

Meanwhile, I was chair of judges for the 2018 McCarthy Award for History of Medicine Research, given by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Our four finalists presented their research at the College on 19 Oct: many thanks to all four of them, and congratulations to Kristin Hussey, our winner. And I’ve been keeping up my ‘Case Histories’ column in the Lancet with (so far this year) entries on diabetes, schizophrenia, syphilis, osteoarthritis, gout, liver cirrhosis, cerebral palsy, prostate cancer, bipolar disorder, and schistosomiasis.

I spent an afternoon in Bristol with Alice Roberts at the delightful Psychopomp Microdistillery, filming a segment on the Gin Craze for Channel 4’s Britain’s Most Historic Towns. I spoke about gin on Rony Robinson’s lunchtime show on BBC Sheffield (about 1hr 8 min in). And Ivan Wise interviewed me for his delightful ‘Better Known’ podcast, on which I chose (amongst other things) kedgeree, Simon Munnery, and Russell Hoban’s Pilgermann.

On 30 May I’ll be talking about ‘The End of London: Apocalypse in the Imperial Metropolis’, at Salon for the City in the Westminster Arts Library. Details & tickets here.

In mid-Nov I was conversation with Chris McCabe, poet and Poetry Librarian at the Southbank Centre, to mark the launch of his fifth collection, Triumph of Cancer. And I’m editing the manuscript of my next poetry book – the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Spring / summer 2018

I’m taking great pleasure in looking back over the now-complete Sick Rose ‘illogy’, produced in collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson. Fortean Times, who’ve given all three volumes splendid reviews, summed it up beautifully: ‘[all three books] are packed with fascinating facts and anecdotes, and profusely illustrated with images that’ll make you squirm. They’ve been consistently excellent as well as intellectual and aesthetic delights.’

I’m curatorial consultant to ‘Teeth’, a forthcoming Wellcome Collection exhibition inspired by The Smile Stealers, which opens on 17 May and runs until 6 Sept. I wrote a piece for the Spectator (behind a paywall) to mark the opening of the exhibition.

On 19 Feb I took part in a panel discussion on ‘Silent Witnesses in History’, as part of the University of Edinburgh’s Festival of Creative Learning. On 17 May I took part in ‘Guts and Gore’ at the Bath Festival with James Wood, writer of BBC2’s Quacks, and Jack Hartnell, author of Medieval Bodies. On 24 May I spoke about ‘Stealing Smiles: Changes in Dentistry During the Twentieth Century’, at the Museum of Health and Medicine at the University of Manchester.

I’ve been keeping up my ‘Case Histories’ column in the Lancet with (so far this year) entries on diabetes, schizophrenia, syphilis, osteoarthritis, gout, and liver cirrhosis.

After seven enjoyable and fulfilling years my association with the Pembroke-Kings Programme in Cambridge has ended. As I understand it, the programme is eliminating much of its humanities teaching to concentrate on economics and maths; good luck to them. It’s been an immense pleasure to work with so many exceptional students and scholars from around the world. I’m delighted to say that this summer I’ll be taking up a new position on the Exeter Summer Programme in Oxford, teaching the history of medicine.

I’m working on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly / literary comfort zone. And I’m keeping on with the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Autumn / winter 2017

The summer and early autumn have flown by, not least because I’ve been immersed in the joyous business of planning a wedding. We’ll be married before Christmas at Chelsea Old Town Hall – where, in the library, I wrote the first drafts of Seahouses – and I simply could not be happier.

I’m also taking great pleasure in looking back over the now-complete Sick Rose ‘illogy’, produced in collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson. Fortean Times, who’ve given all three volumes splendid reviews, summed it up beautifully: ‘[all three books] are packed with fascinating facts and anecdotes, and profusely illustrated with images that’ll make you squirm. They’ve been consistently excellent as well as intellectual and aesthetic delights.’ I’m curatorial consultant to a forthcoming Wellcome Collection exhibition based on one book of the series – watch this space – and I’ve been keeping up my ‘Case Histories’ column in the Lancet with entries on lung cancer and dengue fever, along with a review of ‘Death in the Ice: The Shocking Story of Franklin’s Final Expedition’ at the National Maritime Museum in London.

Quacks – James Wood & Matt Baynton’s BBC2 historical comedy, for which I was consultant – has aired to glowing reviews. James, producer Imogen Cooper, curator Kristin Hussey and I discussed the making of the series at the Royal College of Physicians on 15 Dec.

After seven enjoyable and fulfilling years my association with the Pembroke-Kings Programme in Cambridge has ended. As I understand it, the programme is eliminating much of its humanities teaching to concentrate on economics and maths; good luck to them. It’s been an immense pleasure to work with so many exceptional students and scholars from around the world. I’m delighted to say that next summer I’ll be taking up a new position on the Exeter Summer Programme in Oxford, teaching the history of medicine.

I’m working on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly / literary comfort zone. And I’m keeping on with the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Spring / summer 2017

The big news: the third and final instalment in the Sick Rose ‘illogy’ – The Smile Stealers, on the history of dentistry – came out on 27 April. This is the last in the series that began with my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and it’s another gorgeously-designed and lavishly-produced collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson. Matthew Sweet interviewed me about The Smile Stealers on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, and I discussed the book with Terry Gross on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’. The Times called it ‘gory, beautiful, probing’, the Times Literary Supplement (paywall) called it ‘thoroughly compelling’, Will Self in the London Review of Books said it was ‘excellent’, the Guardian called it ‘fascinating – and frequently shocking’, and published a gallery of images from the book, the Tatler said it was ‘Magnificent … All human life is here – the pain, the suffering and the happiness summed up in the ecstasy of a toothsome smile’, and Monocle Radio said it was ‘a beautiful book, a witty book, a well-made book’. Fortean Times – who’ve given the whole trilogy splendid reviews – summed it up beautifully: ‘[all three books] are packed with fascinating facts and anecdotes, and profusely illustrated with images that’ll make you squirm. They’ve been consistently excellent as well as intellectual and aesthetic delights.’

So this is a good moment to boast about all the gorgeous translated editions of The Sick Rose & Crucial Interventions (see the picture on the left, and there’s already an Italian edition of The Smile Stealers out with Logos Edizioni). I spoke about The Sick Rose at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on Weds 15 Feb, and you can listen to a podcast of my talk here. And while this isn’t exactly news, I’ve been reminded that Sarah Perry, author of the world-bestriding The Essex Serpent, said in her acknowledgements to the novel that ‘The Sick Rose shows the troubling beauty that can be found in sickness and suffering’.

My Dedalus Book of Gin came out in paperback in February, and was Nicholas Lezard’s choice in the Guardian, who said ‘Barnett’s adjectives are to his work as botanicals are to gin: they give it its piquancy and flavour’. So there. New Literary Review in Moscow published a rather gorgeous Russian translation too.

And I’m getting to work on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly / literary comfort zone. Watch this space …

I joined the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL for the spring, to teach a course on the history of disease, and I’m writing a new course for the 2017 Pembroke / Kings Programme – ‘Apocalypse! Visions of the End of the World’. I’ve written entries for ‘Case Histories’, my monthly Lancet column, on alcohol use disorders, obesity, sickle cell anaemia, rubella, epilepsy, hypertension and tuberculosis. I reviewed ‘Method in the Madness: Understanding Ourselves, Now and Then’, an exhibition on Renaissance medicine, at the Shakespeare’s Birthday Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, and James Delbourgo’s Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane. 

I’m historical consultant for Quacks, a new BBC comedy series written by James Wood (of Rev. fame) and Matt Baynton (of Horrible Histories), which should be airing in autumn 2017. Kevin Fong interviewed me for ‘The Split Second Decision’, a BBC Radio 4 documentary on emergency medicine. I spoke on the Gin Craze for the V&A’s ‘London Life & Times’ programme. And I’ll be leading lots of guided walks for all kinds of folk. Do drop me a line if you’d like to book one: as the days get longer, spring is always a lovely season for walking around London.

Finally, I’m keeping on with the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Autumn / winter 2016

I’m promoting my Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, the richly-illustrated follow-up to my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and another collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson. I’ve finished the text for the third and final instalment in the Sick Rose ‘illogy’ – The Smile Stealers, on the history of dentistry. And I’m getting to work on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly / literary comfort zone. Watch this space …

Delighted to say I’ve joined the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL, to teach a course on the history of disease, and I’m writing a new course for the 2017 Pembroke / Kings Programme – ‘Apocalypse! Visions of the End of the World’. And I’ve written entries for ‘Case Histories’, my monthly Lancet column, on infective endocarditis, liver transplant and typhoid fever.

I’m historical consultant for Quacks, a new BBC comedy series written by James Wood (of Rev. fame) and Matt Baynton (of Horrible Histories), which should be airing in spring / summer 2017. I travelled to Paris, to film a an episode of France 2’s ‘Aventures de medécine’, and spent a few days filming in London for China Central TV’s ‘200 Years of Surgery’. I gave the Monckton Copeman lecture – on ‘Death by Water: Rethinking John Snow and Cholera’ – at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, and was delighted to receive their Faculty Medal. And I’ll be leading lots of guided walks for (amongst others) Regent’s College, INKTAL, the UCL Institute of Neurology, and the Chevening Leadership Program at KCL. Do drop me a line if you’d like to book one: autumn is always a lovely season for walking around London.

I’ve also been helping to launch Sophie Churchill’s Wellcome Trust-funded Corpse Project, which is exploring ways to lay the dead to rest in ways that help the living and the Earth. Sophie commissioned me to write a report on the history of practices around disposing of the dead, which you can read here. There’s a summary of my findings and recommendations in a beautiful infographic here.

Finally, I’m keeping on with the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Summer 2016

I’m promoting my Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, the richly-illustrated follow-up to my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and another collaboration with Wellcome Collection. I spoke about the history of surgery and anatomy with Alice Roberts & Roger Kneebone at the Cheltenham Science Festival, and about Crucial Interventions at the York Festival of Ideas at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I’ve finished the text for the third and final instalment in the Sick Rose ‘illogy’ – The Smile Stealers, on the history of dentistry. And I’m getting to work on a new history book, one that’s pulling me out of my scholarly / literary comfort zone. Watch this space …

As usual, I’ll be spending most of the summer teaching on the Pembroke / Kings Programme in Cambridge (where the air positively crackles with the sound of flip-flops on flagstones). I’m writing a new course for PKP 2017 – ‘Apocalypse! Visions of the End of the World in Art and Science’. I’ve written entries for ‘Case Histories’, my monthly Lancet column, on malaria, suicide, and Cushing’s syndrome. I spoke about the history of madness in animals at the Eroica Britannia festival in Bakewell, Derbyshire. I’m historical consultant for an exciting new BBC1 comedy series written by James Wood (of Rev. fame).

I’ve also been helping to launch Sophie Churchill’s Wellcome Trust-funded Corpse Project, which is exploring ways to lay the dead to rest in ways that help the living and the Earth. Sophie commissioned me to write a report on the history of practices around disposing of the dead, which you can read here. There’s a summary of my findings and recommendations in a beautiful infographic here.

Finally, I’m keeping on with the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Spring 2016

I’m promoting my Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, the richly-illustrated follow-up to my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and another collaboration with Wellcome Collection. Press attention so far in 2016 includes this image gallery and perceptive short review at Hyperallergenic, and The Lineup has called it ‘a truly captivating feast for the mind and eyes’. I spoke about Crucial at the National Archives (as part of my stint as their Writer of the Month), and Carianne Whitworth interviewed me for the National Archives blog.  And I’ve finished the text for the third and final instalment in the Sick Rose ‘illogy’ – The Smile Stealers, on the history of dentistry – due out at the end of this year. Watch this space …

Lots of festival talks & events coming up in the summer. I’ll be revisiting The Sick Rose at the Hunterian Museum on the evening of Thurs 12 May (details here). I’ll be talking about the history of surgery and anatomy with Alice Roberts & Roger Kneebone at the Cheltenham Science Festival on Fri 10 June (event code S107). I’ll be exploring the poetry of the dead body with Kass Boucher as part of ‘Death, Art and Anatomy’ at the University of Winchester on Fri 3 June. And I’ll be talking about Crucial Interventions at Carlyle’s House in Chelsea on Thurs 2 June, at the York Festival of Ideas on Sun 12 June and the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Tues 23 Aug.

Also delighted to say that I’m writing a new monthly column for the Lancet – ‘Case Histories’, exploring the cultural history of disease, in association with their new Lancet Clinic online resource. So far I’ve written columns on Parkinson’s disease, ADHD, ovarian cancer, systemic lupus erythematosus, and autism. I spoke about the Gin Craze for the V&A’s ‘London Life & Times’ course, about gin and alchemy at the Salon for the City in Feb, about The Sick Rose at the Hunterian Museum in London, about Crucial Interventions at Carlyle’s House in Chelsea (with apologies to the lady who fainted), about the poetry of the dead body and gave an introductory lecture on historical thinking for students on the IF Project’s ‘Thinking: A Free Introduction’ programme. I talked scandal – medical, political, sexual – with Juliet Gardiner and Kate Mosse in a ‘Platform’ talk before a performance of Granville Barker’s Waste at the National Theatre. I gave more masterclasses on the cultural history of plague at The Prince’s Teaching Institute New Teacher Subject Days, and I spoke about John Snow and cholera to students at the University of Geneva Medical School. I’m historical consultant for an exciting new BBC comedy series written by James Wood (of Rev. fame). I spent some time as an adjunct professor on the University of California spring programme, teaching a course on urban health in London. I’m writing a report for Sophie Churchill’s Wellcome-funded Corpse Project on the history of rituals and practices for disposing of the dead.

Finally, I’ve started work on the follow-up to Seahouses, my award-winning first poetry collection. It’s going to be brutal.

Autumn 2015

Thames & Hudson have published my Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, the richly-illustrated follow-up to my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and another collaboration with Wellcome Collection. I talked about Crucial Interventions at the Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival and Wellcome Collection, and will be speaking at the National Archives on 21 Jan 2016 (as part of my stint as their Writer of the Month) – tickets here. We also held an informal celebration for the book at the High Holborn branch of Blackwell’s. Joanna Bourke gave it a nice review in the Telegraph, and Rebecca Onion chose it as a Slate Pick. The Guardian Culture website is hosting a gallery of images from the book, as is Buzzfeed. Here’s a short film about it, set in Wellcome Collection’s Reading Room. The Lancet published ‘Between survival and wholeness’, – a reflection, prompted by the publication of Crucial Interventions, on my own experiences under the knife and the place of patients in the history of surgery. Rachel Humphries interviewed me for ‘Fresh cuts’, the first episode of Funhouse magazine’s podcast.

Lots of media work, too, which is always fun. I appeared with BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner on BBC1’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, broadcast on 24 Sept. I’ve filmed a segment on John Snow and cholera for ‘The Crowd & The Cloud’, a major PBS science documentary slated for 2017. I filmed a talking-head interview for a Discovery Channel series on twentieth-century warfare, which will be broadcast some time in 2016. I provided some quotes for a BBC News piece on naming diseases. And I’m doing historical consulting work for an exciting new BBC1 comedy pilot – more on this if it goes to series.

I’ll be giving more masterclasses on the cultural history of plague at The Prince’s Teaching Institute New Teacher Subject Days, and leading lots of guided walks for various groups. I also gave a talk on ‘Magic & Medicine’ for London schoolteachers at an evening event in Wellcome Collection. The Lancet Psychiatry published my essay review of Andrew Scull’s Madness In Civilisation (free to read, but you have to register & log in). I spoke on the history of gin for ‘London Is Drinking’, an exploration of London’s drinking history and culture at Conway Hall.

In Oct-Nov I led another series of ‘Blood Lines’, a weekly poetry reading group in Wellcome Collection’s spiffily refurbished Reading Room. I read from Seahouses at the Poetry Book Fair on Sat 26 Sept, and have a couple of poems in the first issue of Funhouse magazine. Quarterday Review gave Seahouses a glowing five-star review in their Samhain edition, calling it ‘unnerving, disturbing and utterly brilliant’.

Summer 2015

As usual, I’ll be spending most of the summer teaching on the Pembroke / Kings Programme in Cambridge (where the air positively crackles with the sound of flip-flops on flagstones).

The big news: Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, the richly-illustrated follow-up to my award-winning and best-selling The Sick Rose, and another collaboration with Wellcome Collection and Thames & Hudson, has gone to press. We’ll be revealing more about Crucial Interventions over the summer, in advance of publication in late October. More soon – and if you’re really keen you can pre-order it here (Amazon).

I took part in ‘Discussing Disfigurement’ – a half-hour video discussion on the history of facial disfigurement with Henrietta Spalding, the inspiring and eloquent Head of Advocacy at Changing Faces, and Mosaic commissioning editor Mun-Keat Looi. I also filmed an interview for the next series of BBC1’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, and led guided walks for students from the University of Arizona.

Spring 2015

The big news: Valley Press have published Seahouses, my first poetry collection. Jamie McGarry (who runs Valley) has turned my manuscript into a beautiful and deeply covetable book, of which I’m as proud as Lucifer. We launched Seahouses at Blackwell’s Holborn on 27 May, and I read from collection at the Inpress Books Poetry Pavilion in the London Book Fair, and East Leeds FM broadcast a recording of me reading three poems from the collection. Through March & April I led ‘Blood Lines’, a weekly poetry reading group in Wellcome Collection’s spiffily refurbished Reading Room, and we’ll be running another series in Oct-Nov.

Former National Forest CEO Sophie Churchill has launched the Corpse Project, a new initiative to encourage debate around the options for our bodies after death. I’m delighted to be part of Sophie’s team for this, and we held our first discussion on 21 May at the Cartoon Museum in London. We’ll be holding more events over the summer – details on the Corpse Project website, and even if you can’t come along, you can follow the Corpse Project on Twitter.

I’ve completed the manuscript for Crucial Interventions, another book in collaboration with the Wellcome Library and Thames & Hudson, this time on the history of surgery in the nineteenth century; more soon. The Book Depository picked The Sick Rose as one of their Covers of the Year, and I spoke about The Sick Rose at Barts Pathology Museum, Words By The Water in Keswick,the Edinburgh Science Festival, Westcliff High School for Boys, and a New Generations workshop at the Wellcome Library for early career researchers in the medical humanities. I also spoke on the cultural history of plague at The Prince’s Teaching Institute New Teacher Subject Days, and led a seminar on health and disease in early modern London for Museum of London Archaeology. I led guided walks for students from the University of Delaware, Nova Southeastern University, Regent’s College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Beefeater Gin, UCL’s Centre for Global Health, and the QMUL students’ union.

My long essay on Nikola Tesla, big science and bullshit came out in the London Review of Books, and the Lancet published my reviews of Lee Jackson’s Dirty Old London and Melanie Keene’s Science in Wonderland.

Autumn 2014

Back in London after a summer in Cambridge, and back to work on lots of projects (more on which soon).

I’m continuing to work with Valley Press on my first poetry collection, Seahouses, which will be published in the spring. I read from Pocket Horizon and Seahouses, alongside Kelley Swain, as part of the Lichfield Literary Festival on 11 Nov.

The Sick Rose continues to prosper, and was named Book of the Year at the 2014 British Book Design Awards. I talked about The Sick Rose at the Institute of Medical Illustrators conference, Blackwells in Oxford and the Brompton Cemetery Chapel (as part of the London Month of the Dead). I’ll also be speaking at Barts Pathology Museum on 28 January 2015, and at Words By The Water in Keswick on 8 March 2015, and discussing the history of medicine at The Prince’s Teaching Institute New Teacher Subject Days in Jan-Feb 2015. My review of the National Gallery’s ‘Rembrandt: The Late Works’ came out in the Lancet. Also happy to say that Audible are turning my Book of Gin into an audiobook, release date TBC.

I spoke to the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association on John Snow and cholera and to Big Ideas on the meaning of normality in science and medicine, opened the Footprints of London Literary Festival at the Guildhall on 1 Oct with a talk about the Gin Craze, led guided walks for the Foundling Museum (on medicine for the poor in Bloomsbury), for students from Imperial College (on John Snow and cholera), and for UCL’s Institute of Neurology (on life and death in literary Bloomsbury), and was interviewed by Flora Allen of the Foundling Museum to mark their exhibition on the Georgian physician Richard Mead. I appeared in a Channel 4 Time Team Special on bodysnatching, in episode 2 of ITV’s ‘Secrets from the Asylum’, and in BBC4’s ‘The Beauty of Anatomy’, and Desiree Schell interviewed me for Science For The People.

Summer 2014

I’m spending most of the summer teaching on the Pembroke / Kings Programme in Cambridge (where the air positively crackles with the sound of flip-flops on flagstones).

I’m delighted to announce that my first full poetry collection, Seahouses, has been accepted by Valley Press and will be published in the spring. Watch this space for updates.

It’s a pleasure to see The Sick Rose doing so well around the world. It’s been shortlisted in the 2014 British Book Design Awards, and we’re planning lots of readings and events over the next few months. Georgia Cherry & Frankie Kubicki of Unmaking Things interviewed me about the book, as did the remarkable and delightful Mark Dery, and it received yet another sparkling review from Niall Boyce in the Lancet. I spoke about the history of anatomy on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio’s The Body Sphere, and on Sunday 10 August I’ll be talking about ‘The Theatre of Anatomy’ at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The first episode of BBC4’s ‘The Beauty of Anatomy’, to which I was a major contributor, will be broadcast on Weds 13th Aug. Laura Ashe interviewed me about the Black Death and the Great Plague for a BBC Radio 3 documentary made by Loftus Media, to be broadcast in November.  My review of Joanna Bourke’s The Story of Pain came out in the Lancet, I wrote a little piece (right at the bottom of the page) on the poet Geoffrey Hill for Remedia, and I’ve been invited to compile an entry for Who’s Who. I’ve also been discussing possibilities for new projects with the artist Tom de Freston.

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 growing community of emeritus Fellows, and to be thinking in earnest about what comes next. More and better, I hope: more books, more teaching, more radio & TV, more of the collaborations that made the Fellowship so enjoyable.

Finally: without the fine folk of the Brooklyn Hospital Center I would not be alive, and without Obamacare I would not be solvent. Heartfelt thanks.