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...worked for those who believed in the hymen as a barrier, and for those who didn’t. The latter thought that the problem was a different sort of closure, that of little internal “mouths” that allowed blood from all over the body to get into the womb in the first place. If you had the “disease of virgins” your skin colour was thought to be a very unattractive hue,...

...vignette of depression – ‘Pale blinds drawn all day/Nothing to do/Nothing to say’ – with the almost ecstatic resolve to wait ‘for the gift of sound and vision’. This isn’t only a conduit to other peoples’ work, it is an abstract poetry, an ongoing, seductive invitation to be unsettled, to risk going low. Find out more about David Bowie, music and death...

...work of Alexander Pope. His supporters returned him to the Commons as MP for Middlesex, but on the grounds of his conviction, Parliament had expelled him in February 1769, twice; and then again in March. He was re-elected every time. By April, the authorities came up with a way of avoiding the cat-and-mouse game: effectively refusing to acknowledge his win...[John Wilkes...