Explore Essays and memoir
Sort by:
Sort by:
All Species Have the Same Life
Emanuele Coccia
‘I have in me the vestiges of an endless series of living beings, all born of other living beings.’
Clarity
Ruchir Joshi
‘I was close to my own father, which many people are not.’
Ruchir Joshi remembers his son.
Words for Woman
Susana Moreira Marques
‘What we need, now, is: Mrs Dalloway in London, but as an immigrant’
How much faith can we place in coronavirus antibody tests?
Megan Price, Morgan Agnew & David Peters
Why is it so hard to roll out accurate antibody tests? Statisticians break down the challenges that come with testing for coronavirus immunity.
What History Tells Us About Epidemics
Sandra Hempel
‘From when we first began living together in settlements, bacteria and viruses were with us, replicating, mutating and jumping species with extraordinary agility.’
War and Virus
Vesna Maric
‘Wars, national disasters and pandemics do not cause social disintegration – they reveal it, and deepen it.’
Vesna Maric on the difference between wars and viruses.
The Pandemic, Our Common Story
Anna Badkhen
Anna Badkhen was researching Eden – the origins of humanity in the Afar Triangle of East Africa – when coronavirus broke out across the world.
The Lessons We Choose
Beth Gardiner
This will not be the last crisis. What can we learn from this one?
Plague Diary: March
Gonçalo M. Tavares
A coronavirus diary from the Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated by Daniel Hahn.
Mama’s Last Hug
Frans de Waal
‘Watching behaviour comes naturally to me, so much so that I may be overdoing it.’
The Medical Detective
Sandra Hempel
An extract from Sandra Hempel’s The Medical Detective, which follows the story of the man who identified – and helped stop – the cholera pandemic of the 1830s.
