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)

Woman's Hour

Yesterday's edition of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, featured an interview with Dr Lesley Hall talking about her new book - recently highlighted here - The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Spirit.

The interview discusses Browne's career and relationship with other birth control campaigners, and begins with Dr Hall giving as the starting point for her research, her cataloguing of the papers of the Abortion Law Reform Association, held in the Wellcome Library.

Listeners in the UK can listen again to the interview through the Woman's Hour website.

'Sinful Sex and Demon Drink' in the Wellcome Library

This week saw the broadcast on BBC2 of the concluding part of Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, a series which set out to restore the reputation of Victorian social campaigners and reformers.

The concluding episode - Sinful Sex and Demon Drink - featured a sequence filmed in the Wellcome Library. This discussed the work of the social purity campaigner Ellice Hopkins (1836-1904) and featured presenter Ian Hislop read from a copy we have of her instructional pamphlet 'True Manliness', which promoted the virtues of male chastity.

The episode - along with the first two in the series - featured a wealth of material on health in the nineteenth century and is available through the BBC iPlayer to viewers in the UK until Monday 20th December.

Image: Ian Hislop (BBC Press Office)

Wellcome Library Insight: From Deviance to Diversity

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - on Thursday 15th July - explores changing attitudes to sex and gender.

Using a broad range of materials from the Wellcome Library, the session will demonstrate the gradual changes in medical and scientific understanding of sexual identity, the bringing about of changes in the law, and the development of more tolerant social attitudes.

Our Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 3pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Wellcome Library Insights: June - July

Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections.

The next series of Insights begins this Thursday afternoon (3rd June) at 3pm, exploring how Native American cultures have been recorded, celebrated and misrepresented, using examples from the Library’s collections. You can pick up your free ticket for this event from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 13.30 on the day. Tickets are issued on a first-come, first-served basis: for more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Our other Insights sessions for June and July are:

The Quest for Perfect Skin - 17th June, 6-7pm

From Deviance to Diversity – 15th July, 3-4pm

For more details on attending the sessions, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.

Wellcome Library Insight - From deviance to diversity

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - on Thursday 25th February - explores changing attitudes to sex and gender.

Our Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 6.00pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 4.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Wellcome Library Insight - From deviance to diversity

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - on Thursday 11th February - explores changing attitudes to sex and gender.

Our Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 6.00pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 4.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

A short post about long service

This summer marked the 35th anniversary of William Schupbach, Curator, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, starting work with what was then the Wellcome Institute. Since then, William and colleagues have undertaken a mammoth cataloguing task, to allow access to the illustrative works in our holdings. William has also spoken widely,
published extensively on medical portraiture, and was integral to the launch and success this year of the John Thomson exhibition in China.

Today also marks the 30th anniversary of Dr Lesley Hall starting work with the Wellcome. Since 1979, Lesley has been at the forefront of the Library’s work in acquiring and cataloguing the papers of twentieth century scientific societies and scientists of distinction. She is also one of the world’s leading historians of sexuality, with books including Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain (2000) and Outspoken Women (2005), and is a regular contributor to history programmes on both BBC radio and television.

Libraries are about people as much as they are about collections, and at the Wellcome Library, both our readers and fellow members of staff, have been extremely lucky to draw on William and Lesley’s knowledge and expertise.

Forthcoming events

News of a pair of forthcoming public events, which draw on the expertise and skills of two members of Wellcome Library staff.

On Thursday 24th September, Dr Lesley Hall, Senior Archivist, is speaking at ‘Sex: A Victorian Mystery’, a Wellcome Collection event to tie in with the Exquisite Bodies exhibition. The evening aims to bring together visual, historical and literary perspectives, in order to illuminate Victorian contradictions to sex and sexual health.

And on Thursday 22nd October, William Schupbach, Curator, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, will give a lecture entitled ‘Physicians and scholars: libraries and learning in 17th century medical portraits’, at an evening event at the Royal College of Physicians, 'Secrets of 17th Century Portraiture’.

Scouting for Boys

BBC4 repeated last week the documentary Scouting for Boys, which describes the story behind Robert Baden-Powell’s best-selling book, which kick-started the Boy Scout movement.

The documentary places the book in the context of its time, describing the social questions which dominated Edwardian thinking, and includes an interview with Dr Lesley Hall of the Wellcome Library, on concerns over the sex education of boys during this period.

More details on the BBC iplayer.