Clair Wills talks to Tom about Netherne psychiatric hospital, where her mother and grandparents worked, and which became a national centre for art therapy. Wills asks how asylums such as Netherne – ‘total institutions’ as Erving Goffman described them – became normalised, and considers the role of art in revealing people’s experiences of them. They also discuss Wills’s related piece about the scandal of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes, published in the LRB in May. Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/willspod Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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