Roy Porter

Roy Porter discusses the life of the 18th-century essayist and critic.

Roy Porter opens our new series on Picturing History, based on a series of lectures organised in conjunction with Reaktion Books, and shows how 18th-century images of the medical profession flow over into the work of political caricaturists.

Roy Porter discusses how the British Enlightenment paved the way for the modern world.

Katherine Ott

Roy Porter, in his Longman/History Today lecture, warns of the bad eyesight, poor posture, incomprehensible babblings, addled wits, depravity and worse that may befall those who immerse themselves too much in books.

‘Bedlam’ has become a by-word for a wild and crazy place, but what is the historical reality behind a distinguished London institution? 

Roy Porter argues that historians must re-examine their purpose, between specialised study and general discovery.

Roy Porter describes an institution of the mid-18th century designed to care for abandoned infants.

'Living high above her bodily wits' - but was the 'madness' of a 15th-century English gentlewoman divine folly, marital stress or the stirrings of a self-conscious feminist?