Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?. Oliver Burkeman does perceive that there's a certain amount of dodgy gender stuff going on in these paeans to Real Manly Work fixing motorbikes and masoning stone, but doesn't take it further either in the direction of ( Read more... )

What is it that makes a middle-aged Rastafarian dub poet desert the city and divide his time between a remote Lincolnshire village and a flat in Beijing?

Interviewer Lynn Barber (surely hardened, cynical, jaded) found his private performance for her of 'Rong Radio' in a bookshop stockroom among boxes of books 'one of the most thrilling experiences ( Read more... )

The problem with putting people into ticky-tacky boxes and assuming that defines them: Sue Tilley, who the media just plain did not get when Lucien Freud's painting of her broke price records;
Tilley's bizarre double life is quite extraordinary. She started working at Camden job centre in her early twenties, made a friend there who took her out ( Read more... )

Annoying article on my beloved Dame Rebecca in today's Guardian Review by Stefan Collini. Apart from making me want to beat him about the head with a cppy (hardback, if possible) of How to Suppress Women's Writing - especially given that he explicitly invokes the unladylike characteristics of 'Performing, grabbing attention, making a splash: these ( Read more... )

Recently came across intriguing article in the Times Higher Educational Supplement (July 20, because of the slow circulation), on the links between birth defects and men's exposure to harmful substances, and the under-reporting of same, by Cynthia Daniels (unfortunately it's not possible to link because of subscription requirements).
[H]undreds of ( Read more... )

Thanks to everybody who provided assistance in trying to discover the details of the story I was looking for - even if I still haven't managed to pin it down.

The context for me was writing up my commentator's notes from the January workshop in Cambridge as an afterword to the published papers. One of the subjects under discussion was the history ( Read more... )

HRT: Survey after survey has linked hormone replacement therapy to cancer, strokes, blood clots and heart disease. Why, then, are so many women so relaxed about using it? And why do some doctors insist that the dangers are exaggerated? Sarah Boseley investigates.

Good article. Though the issue around ageing seems to me a bit underdeveloped: given ( Read more... )

New research has revealed that male fertility goes into decline after the age of 40. So does that mean there is now a biological clock for men as well as women? And if so, how will it influence when couples decide to start a family? Andy Beckett investigates.

Interesting:
The French findings feel boldly counter-intuitive, in the light of decades of ( Read more... )

Fertility specialists revealed new evidence yesterday that male fertility declines with age as they warned that men's lack of awareness of their own biology may be playing a part in low birthrates:
Allan Pacey, the secretary of the British Fertility Society and senior lecturer at Sheffield University, said the evidence for male fertility dropping ( Read more... )