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Biography and memoir

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations

Architecture Art Biography and memoir Dance and theatre Design and fashion Film and visual culture Food and drink Home Music Nature and landscape Rituals and celebrations Sports and games Stories and literature Subcultures Travel

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Vintage black and white photo of a woman in a garden sitting beside a large urn with a sleeping dog lying nearby.

essayFamily life

Glorious and mundane

I once exalted in the extraordinary. But as I’ve learned from Virginia Woolf, indelible beauty is also found in the everyday

Diana Saverin

Photo of three people in traditional robes, two holding wooden staffs, standing outside a wooden building in sunlight.

essayRituals and celebrations

A life in Zen

Growing up in countercultural California, ‘enlightenment’ had real glamour. But decades of practice have changed my mind

Anshi Zachary Smith

Black and white photo of a man in a suit speaking passionately at a podium with microphones.

essayBiography and memoir

The story of Malcolm X

Alex Haley co-wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X but Haley left out some profound elements of Malcolm’s political thought

Alex White

Cropped illustration of a person in a pink robe with orange patterns walking beside a horse, surrounded by grass and flowers.

essayGender

Taliban bride

Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter

Zala & Asad Nariman

Digital artwork of a skull with holographic elements and text overlays on a dark background.

videoConsciousness and altered states

‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality

7 minutes

An older man in a red cap and printed T-shirt looking into the distance.

videoVirtues and vices

Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later

16 minutes

Illustration of two people with closed eyes softly singing into a microphone, featuring simple brushstroke style.

videoLanguage and linguistics

Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers

5 minutes

Illustration of two people observing ants on a forest floor with a textured tree background.

videoFamily life

One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor

10 minutes

Black and white photo of a large group of boys and a few adults standing on bare ground, all dressed in 1960s attire.

essayEducation

A valiant experiment

The progressive and remarkably innovative Woodmead School briefly flourished amid the viciousness of apartheid South Africa

David Dyzenhaus

A man with a long beard wearing glasses holding a net against a backdrop of a grassy field and cloudy sky.

videoAnimals and humans

The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net

10 minutes

An adult and two children in a mall atrium, dressed in winter clothing.

essayBiography and memoir

A grief with no name

As a child, I was torn from a culture that I never knew. It is a loss that defines me, even as I struggle to define the loss

Jelena Markovic

Photo of an elderly man with a bald head and moustache wearing a suit and tie, smiling against a light-coloured, blurred background.

videoWar and peace

‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary

12 minutes

A painting depicting a group of people in a room, with a man painting and a young girl in the centre, dressed in ornate clothes.

videoArt

Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece

31 minutes

A painting of two girls with long hair each holding peacock feathers standing in front of a textured, muted background.

videoFamily life

The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations

10 minutes

Black-and-white photo of a woman holding her child on a stone pier, with small wooden boats and a shoreline in the background.

essayFilm and visual culture

The risk of beauty

W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we now look at them?

Joanna Pocock

Painting of a rural street on a dark night featuring a two-storey white farmhouse, a red barn, powerlines, and a bright light in the centre.

essaySleep and dreams

Spinning the night self

After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours

Annabel Abbs

Two older women wearing hats and sunglasses raise their arms in celebration at a street parade, with a purple background.

videoSex and sexuality

From secret crushes to self-acceptance – a joyful chronicle of ‘old lesbian’ stories

29 minutes

Aerial view of a large pipeline construction site with machinery and vehicles cutting through green fields and hills under a partly cloudy sky.

essayNature and landscape

Land loneliness

To survive, we are asked to forget that our lands and bodies are being violated, policed, ripped up, silenced, sacrificed

Kelsey Day

A young girl in a pink dress stands on a step, holding the hand of an adult. Four adults are partially visible around her.

essayBiography and memoir

The adoption paradox

Even happy families cannot avoid the reality – my reality – that adoption is predicated on transacting the life of a child

Fiona Sampson

Handwritten notes in black ink on an open notebook, with red and black corrections.

essayThinkers and theories

Paper trails

Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister

Peter Salmon

Mist-covered city skyline with a calm, reflective body of water in the foreground under a grey sky.

essayPleasure and pain

Eulogy for silence

Tinnitus is like a constant scream inside my head, depriving me of what I formerly treasured: the moments of serene quiet

Diego Ramírez Martín del Campo

Four young girls in dresses smile outside, with one holding a small cat.

videoBiography and memoir

Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood

8 minutes

Illustration of a child sitting with their head down and knees up, next to a toy box with a teddy bear sticking out. An adult’s legs, dressed in a red skirt and brown shoes, are visible seated nearby on the right.

essayPsychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

The astronaut Ed Dwight in an orange jumpsuit smiles while holding a white helmet against a clear blue sky background.

videoBiography and memoir

Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act

13 minutes