Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

Raphael Samuel​ adopted his notetaking method from Beatrice and Sidney Webb, progenitors of Fabian socialism, who developed it in the late 19th century:

Each thought or reference to a source was written or pasted onto a single side of a loose sheet of paper. It might be the source itself – an advertisement, a jam-jar label or an extract from a Xerox – it mattered only that it was...

Alex Comfort​ was exhausting. After meeting him, the pioneering sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson swapped notes. ‘If we could learn to produce on a 24-hour level the way he does, I think we’d probably have it made,’ Johnson said. ‘Five or six hours is all I can stand,’ Masters replied. ‘I end up out of breath while he’s...

Gary Webster​ was seventeen when he was told he had Aids and might have just two or three years to live. It was early 1983 and he was at Treloar’s, a boarding school for children with haemophilia and other disabling conditions. He had to give the news to his parents himself. In his written statement to the Infected Blood Inquiry he said the ‘worst thing’ was the stigma. He...

In​ 1955, William Strath was asked to produce a report for the government on the possible impact of nuclear conflict on the UK. Strath, a former tax inspector, economic planner and experienced civil servant, came to the conclusion that Britain was unlikely to emerge from a nuclear attack as a functioning society, never mind as a nation able to wage war. The United States had recently tested...

The analogy between the welfare state and the sick note ignores the fact that, unlike the sick note, the welfare state has been consistently popular with the public – despite the carping of the Daily Mail. Grassroots critics of welfare have rarely called for cuts but overwhelmingly for expansion: for the system to live up to the high hopes invested in it.