Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster

No of course not, it just was particularly jarring given the environment we’re in

Thank you! It’s very nice to hear about people with grown-up NICU graduates.

More tales from the NICU: someone was vaping yesterday

S2: On Surgical Stereotypes with Agnes Arnold-Forster, PhD Podcast Episode · In the Same Vein · 10/01/2025 · 44m

New season of "In the Same Vein" has launched!!

My wonderful (graduated) master's student Jan and I interview @agnesjuliet.bsky.social about surgical myths and stereotypes & why a historian's perspective is vital in health policy and practice, among other topics!

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Society has reached such a state of disrepair that people are watching TikToks with no headphones in the NICU

As if having a very premature baby isn’t stressful enough

Cover of my book We Have Come To Be Destroyed: Growing Up In Cold War Britain. The cover is an eerie blue-green and the words melt into an image of a group of children confronting the camera at a festival in Coventry in 1980.

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

Nostalgia: A Dangerous Emotion? | Cheltenham Festivals Once diagnosed as a deadly illness, nostalgia now shapes everything from personal memory to political movements. Novelist Georgi Gospodinov, historian Agne

I'm speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Monday 13th October with novelist Georgi Gospodinov and psychologist Catherine Loveday!

www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/nosta...

And! We bought a house today! Completed on this 1970s gem in South London

Off to do some filming for German TV about nostalgia!

The German cover might - among stiff competition - be my favourite

I love these illustrations from a 1980s pamphlet on pre-term labour so much

It’s pouring with rain, but I just ate a ripe fig off a tree in south London

KNOW YOUR CONIFERS!

Not just any seaweed, BROWN seaweed

Living temporarily with my mum while we’re between houses, and these are the kind of gems she comes home with 🌿

I'll let you know what a bunch of policy folk think!

Why the history of public consultation matters for contemporary health policy Contemporary policy debates construct public involvement in England’s National Health Service as “new,” or as a practice dating back only as far as th…

We're reading @jennycrane.bsky.social's fantastic article on the history of public consultation and health policy in our policy team's analysis/reading group at the Health Foundation this week! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hello world! EAHMH is now officially on Bluesky. Follow us to receive updates about all things #histmed (but also #histsci, #STS) etc.

For those of you joining us in Berlin for our biannual conference, please help us spread the word by using #eahmh25!

This is a really excellent, well-argued piece from @jenniferthf.bsky.social on the unresolved "dualities" which plague English health policy - and how far we (still) are from any settled view on how the NHS should be run.

www.health.org.uk/features-and...

There's a LOT of tragedy going on here, but can't help feeling the purest horror for poor Mrs Thackeray

🤰 Giving birth in 1818, full stop
🩺 Your Dr is widely blamed for the death of Princess Charlotte in childbirth weeks earlier
💀 Your Dr then SHOOTS HIMSELF while you are in labour

Sounds like Mrs Thackeray delivered safely, though, at least?

This is absolutely wild

Once had an academic say a very similar thing to me about post-docs on their project... (although their point was less about humanity, and more about how you could get more out of two desperate people, than one well-remunerated one)

'The decision to abolish NHS England marks the end of a 12-year experiment of trying to run the NHS at much greater arm’s length from politicians – through a statutorily independent body, rather than NHS leadership embedded in the DHSC.' Hugh Alderwick Agnes Arnold-Forster at the Health Foundation

Following the decision to abolish NHS England, @agnesjuliet.bsky.social​ and @hughalderwick.bsky.social​ analyse the history of changes to NHS management, identify unresolved tensions that underpin them and set out implications for the latest round of reform.

Read more ⬇️
https://bit.ly/4mtiZB9

My non-history job allowed me to write some history! (and its policy implications, ofc)

I once set out to walk from my airbnb in a Nashville suburb to a coffee shop 14 minutes away and four (4) separate (very nice, well-meaning) people in their cars stopped to ask me why I was walking and if I was okay.

The experiences of Communard refugees in Britain and Ireland In 1886, Paschal Grousset, once a member of the executive committee of the Paris Commune, found himself troubled by Victorian Dublin’s food options.

My first piece in the TLS — a review of a fantastic and pioneering new study of the Paris Commune’s afterlives in Britain and Ireland by @lauracforster.bsky.social

www.the-tls.com/history/the-...

Second!

How can the feet have already disappeared when I still have three months to go?

But also I haven’t been talking about the expense of city/London life because I put the people who would LIKE to raise their kids in the city but can’t afford it (v understandable) in a different category to those who don’t want to (weirdos)

Eliza Filby did a good thing on Instagram crunching the numbers and if you’re still tied to working in London/a regular commute then moving out isn’t actually cheaper