[Review] Ruin Lust at Tate Britain

The ruin lies in ruins. Brian Dillon, co-curator of Tate Britain’s Ruin Lust exhibition, admits as much at the start of his accompanying book: “It seems that the harder we think about destruction and decay […] and the further we explore the very idea of ruin itself, the less the whole category holds together” (p.5). So while book and exhibition offer numerous valuable thoughts on what the ruin can mean, why it rose to prominence in art and writing of the eighteenth century, and how it persists in the modern imagination, a systematic and unified appreciation of the topic is bound to remain out-of-reach

[Review] Mary Toft's Rabbit Tale

Originally broadcast in April 2011 and aired again by BBC Radio 4 this November, Mary Toft’s Rabbit Tale is a radio drama retelling the story of its titular fraudster’s brief notoriety. With a high-profile cast – including singer Will Young as Toft’s husband and Rupert Graves as man-midwife, John Howard – the play explores a number of issues related to the alleged rabbit births of 1726 and their impact on public discourse of the time

[Review] Venice Preserv'd

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[Review] Forever

While Starz show Outlander is entertaining audiences with the prospect of travelling to the eighteenth century, another production with quite the opposite premise is struggling for its life. ABC’s procedural crime drama Forever may not feature time travel as such, but its story of an immortal man, born in eighteenth-century Britain and now working as a medical examiner in modern-day New York, works similarly to a time-travel narrative, inviting reflections on the nature of historical progress and the value of the past

[Review] Ashley Marshall, The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770

The business of defining satire, let alone assessing its uses and motivations, is fraught with difficulty. Much of the early part of Ashley Marshall’s study is devoted to establishing that previous scholarly accounts of satire’s history in the long eighteenth century have been misguided, or at least incomplete: they extrapolate broad conclusions from a small number of not-very-representative canonical texts; they tend to impose an inappropriate coherence upon a genre diverse in its tones, aims, and techniques

Structural evolution triggers a dynamic reduction in active glacier length during rapid retreat: evidence from Falljökull, SE Iceland

Over the past two decades Iceland's glaciers have been undergoing a phase of accelerated retreat set against a backdrop of warmer summers and milder winters. This paper demonstrates how the dynamics of a steep outlet glacier in maritime SE Iceland have changed as it adjusts to recent significant changes in mass balance. Geomorphological evidence from Falljökull, a high-mass turnover temperate glacier, clearly shows that between 1990 and 2004 the ice front was undergoing active retreat resulting in seasonal oscillations of its margin. However, in 2004–2006 this glacier crossed an important dynamic threshold and effectively reduced its active length by abandoning its lower reaches to passive retreat processes. A combination of ice surface structural measurements with radar, lidar, and differential Global Navigation Satellite Systems data are used to show that the upper active section of Falljökull is still flowing forward but has become detached from and is being thrust over its stagnant lower section. The reduction in the active length of Falljökull over the last several years has allowed it to rapidly reequilibrate to regional snowline rise in SE Iceland over the past two decades. It is possible that other steep, mountain glaciers around the world may respond in a similar way to significant changes in their mass balance, rapidly adjusting their active length in response to recent atmospheric warming

The feasibility of a multi‐professional training to improve how health care professionals deliver different news to families during pregnancy and at birth

Background: In the United Kingdom, pregnant women are offered foetal anomaly screening to assess the chance of their baby being born with eleven different conditions. How health care professionals (HCPs) deliver news about a child having a congenital anomaly affects how it is received and processed by parents. We refer to this news as different news. Methods: We conducted a mixed methods evaluation of a training intervention to improve how HCPs deliver different news. Twenty‐six HCPs self‐completed pretraining and posttraining questionnaires on skills, knowledge, and attitudes related to delivering different news. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight HCPs. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, the paired t test to compare the pre and post scores and estimate the difference between pre and post scores, and the 95% confidence interval. Qualitative data were analysed using framework analysis guided by the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). Results: The training intervention was both feasible and acceptable. HCPs indicated that it enhanced or consolidated their knowledge and skills, covered topics relevant to their practice, and that they would recommend it to colleagues. Participants particularly valued integration of the voice of parents with lived experience in the training. Significant increase in mean scores were observed in confidence to deliver different news (2.81, 95% CI [2.43, 3.19] to 4.28, 95% CI [4.09, 4.47]; p < .001) and skills to deliver different news (3.00, 95% CI [2.64, 3.36] to 4.36, 95% CI [4.13, 4.59]; p < .001). HCPs reported feeling more confident in their ability to provide sensitive, responsive, balanced care to families. Conclusions: The significant improvements in confidence and skills reported by HCPs suggest that the training may be effective in equipping HCPs to minimize the distress, anxiety, and depression associated with receiving different news. This represents a key aspect of the prevention of mental ill health across the life course