From clowns to kayaks: a history of fear and loathing

As we settle into 2026, precarity reigns – from your bank balance to the news cycle. As research brands future-focused worry a public health issue, WH reports on the strategies that can keep yours in check

‘Green sickness’, also known as the ‘disease of virgins’ – a diagnosis applied mainly to teenage girls from the 16th to the 19th centuries – is one of the most puzzling conditions in the history of me

Lizzie Wade Apocalypse How catastrophe transformed our world and can forge new futures 320pp. William Collins. £20. Luke Kemp Goliath’s Curse The history and future of societal collapse 592pp. Viking.

Do older people see more ghosts? In the 1985 film version of EM Forster’s A Passage to India, a character refers to the tendency of older people to believe in ghosts, remarking “that it’s difficult, a

A Russia of trees and liberty and peace: ...

You might expect to encounter a psychopath in a law office or managing a hedge fund, or perhaps in an operating theatre. Law, finance and medicine are often seen as favourable professions for those wh