Out in the World

Last Sunday saw the start of a new series on BBC Radio 3, Out in the World - A Global Gay History. Here's the details from the programme's website:

Richard Coles embarks on an excavation of same sex desire through the ages, starting with the modern construction of gay identity and its links with the ancient world.

Across four programmes and a range of investigations which reach from the UK to India, Egypt, Greece and Native America, Richard discovers a far more complex and nuanced story than one of darkness into light.

The first episode featured Coles visiting the Wellcome Library to speak to Senior Archivist Dr Lesley Hall, to discuss the work of pioneering sexologists from the late 19th century. Their dialogue partly focuses around Richard von Krafft-Ebing - whose papers are held here - and includes a discussion of the image that accompanies this post.

The first episode of Out in the World is available for listeners in the UK until Sunday 25th September, through the BBC iPlayer.

Image: Photograph of a man with a moustache dressed in women's clothing (PP/KEB/E/6)

The Red Book

It's not often books purchased by the Wellcome Library have guested on a prime time American crime show, but then again, Carl Jung's The Red Book is no ordinary work.

A facsimile of Carl Jung's Liber Novus (New Book), The Red Book was only published for the first time last year. It records in words and images the innermost feelings and thoughts of Jung, who started the work after undergoing an intense spiritual and mental crisis in the 1910s. According to the book's editor Prof Sonu Shamdasani, the publication of the work is an enormously important event in the history of psychology: the whole of Jung's career can now be reinterpreted through this intense work.

Both literally and metaphorically a weighty tome, the shelves of the Wellcome Library hold a number of copies of The Red Book and all are available to our readers. For an introduction to the work, BBC Radio 3 devoted the interval to last Saturday's Prom concert to a discussion of the work between presenter Bidisha, Prof Shamdasani and artist Bettina Reiber (and to sample the book's visual style, take a look at this BBC Slideshow).

The discussion will be available to listeners in the UK through the Radio 3 website until next Saturday: the Red Book feature begins 10 minutes into the programme.

The origins of The origin

In the Wellcome Trust's headquarters, this colossal bust of Georges Cuvier stands in the atrium outside a meeting room called the Darwin Room. The irony of that conjuncture may be lost on many of the people who use the meeting room. If so, they will be in a good position to appreciate it after listening to a talk by Dr Andrew Cunningham of Cambridge University on the connections between French and English evolutionary thought, to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday evening (8 February 2009) at 9.30 pm London time.

Were European researchers thinking along the same lines as Darwin, or were they following separate paths of enquiry? What impact did the intellectual environment of post-revolutionary France have on their scientific theories of animal development? And what role did Cuvier play in the events? Tune in on Sunday evening.

Above: Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron Cuvier (1769-1832), comparative anatomist, palaeontologist, and educational reformer. Plaster bust by David d'Angers (1788-1856). Wellcome Library no. 11959i