Articles Archive

The best of times, the worst of times

BEHIND THE PRINCESS Marina Hospital, not far from the centre of Gaborone, are the two small buildings that house...

Learning from forgotten epidemics

A panic had set in and people from the infected area were hurrying to be inoculated. The crush was...

Belfast

BELFAST. EARLY 1970s. I am a fourteen-year-old boy on a shopping expedition with my mother. Objective: the purchase of...

By Michael Andrews

Deaths I have outsmarted

SOMETIMES, MY SISTER seemed to be beckoning it, and I would steer well clear of her. Down the back,...

By Andrew Belk

Playing with fire

"NOTHING MUCH" WAS the usual reply when asked what was going on. Nothing much went on in the summer...

By Bille Brown (dec.)

A doctor’s notebook

The woman from County Meath THE WARMTH OF the Dublin day caught everyone by surprise. Through the window I could...

By Frank Brennan

Conscripts to the cavalry

ON A SPRING day in 1971, my husband, my best friend and I set off from Boston, Massachusetts bound...

By Simi Linton

Sex and the single bed

A HEIGHT-ADJUSTIBLE HOSPITAL bed. At first I didn't understand what the nurses meant. For a moment I pictured our...

By Virginia Lloyd

Yahtzee and the art of happiness

"SINS HAVE LONG shadows." A Chinese student said this to my husband when he heard that John had missed...

By Helena Pastor

My Mount Everest

We stand at the precipice of a grave threat to our public health ... [Hepatitis C] affects people from...

By Meera Atkinson

Applying the paradox of prevention: Eradicate HIV

Shortlisted, Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards 2008, Science Writer Award IMAGINE IT: SOME fifty thousand young Australians suddenly struck down and...

By Bill Bowtell

The unblooded author

THE CLOSEST I have ever been to civil violence is about one kilometre. That is not very close, comparatively...

By Joanne Carroll