Kevin Brown
@KBrownHistorian
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Historian, writer, lecturer, archivist, author of books on history of medicine, military & maritime history, & Curator of Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum.
London
Joined March 2013
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My latest book “Titanic, Ship of Lost Illusions: A Floating Microcosm of Edwardian Society”, a study of attitudes to class, race, gender & the cult of manliness exposed as a ship went down ISBN 978-1036119720 to be published by Pen & Sword, 30 March 2025
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94 years ago on 3 September 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. He was also aware of antibiotic resistance early on and warned of the problems to come. Time to tackle them.
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City of London banker in 2014 standing where 1600 City workers took their oath of allegiance at Tower of London in August 1914. He stands among photographic ghosts yet he could have been one of them or they could have been his colleagues of today. Reality of war brought home.
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Monday 3 September 1928, the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, a chance observation with momentous consequences for health & happiness - & still important on its 90th anniversary. Happy 90th birthday
#penicillin
!
@ImperialNHS
@DoM_Imperial
@ImperialCharity
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A museum devoted to Ronald Ross and his work on malaria at Silchar would be a memorial and educational resource, like the Fleming Museum is for penicillin @ St Mary’s Hospital
@ImperialNHS
Preserve and propagate the history of medicine.
@daisylsagar
@doctorsoumya
@doctorsoumya
We should make a museum. Imperial college London has a museum where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.
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Ai Weiwei uses his artist’s imagination to make sense of the human element in design: individual craftsmanship & mass construction, manufacture & destruction, the value given by age making today’s detritus tomorrow’s antiquities or relics of a scorned past
@aiww
@DesignMuseum
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Is it really 40 years since I matriculated at Oxford and entered Hertford College? 1979 doesn’t seem that long ago and inside I don’t feel any older, it’s just the rest of me that has aged. Stimulating times ahead for current freshers starting a new stage of life
@HertfordCollege
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Penicillin was produced at the Royal Navy Medical School in empty gin bottles: no wonder the Navy was reluctant to end production after the war: “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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“Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”, my latest book out now, a study of how physical and psychological well-being was maintained when there was a war to be won
@penswordbooks
@SeaforthPub
@militarymed_
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Privileged to have had personal tour with glimpse behind the scenes of Battle of Britain Bunker
@BofBBunker
Uxbridge. Thank you Fred, an engaging guide
@LBH_Heritage
. Atmospheric trip back to the dark days of 1940.
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A moving way to mark Armistice Day in the middle of a national lockdown
#PoppiesToPaddington
with wreaths carried by 9 trains to be laid at the Great Western Railway War Memorial of Great War soldier reading a letter from home (Charles Sargeant Jagger,1922) at Paddington Station
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I feel lucky to have had the privilege of having enjoyed the unique ambience of some of Britain’s most beautiful and atmospheric libraries in my pursuit of enlightenment & knowledge
@bodleianlibs
@gladlib
@britishlibrary
@britishmuseum
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Tile paintings with Alice in Wonderland scenes from Lewis Carroll Ward, St Mary's Hospital (1936), uncovered during building work after nearly 30 years behind plaster board
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Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell), an early painting by Rembrandt in his series of allegories on the five senses, shows an old woman reviving a young man with smelling salts watched by a barber surgeon.
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Roger Bannister commemorated with a stone at Westminster Abbey among other doctors and scientists, remembered for his contribution to medicine rather than his record breaking mile
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Amazing that my books Poxed and Scurvied”, “The Pox” & especially “Passage to the World” should be read in Lisbon & indirectly lead to me being invited to deliver a distinguished guest lecture for the University of Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences
@SeaforthPub
@PenSwordeBooks
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Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, the Birthplace of Penicillin, is designated World Origin Site 0001 on 95th anniversary of the discovery
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Morality tales in wax art of Gaetano Zumbo warned of disease as punishment of sin, the art of medicine
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“Fittest of the Fit: Health & Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”: my next book, out in July 2019, will ask how true was the Navy’s claim to have the best recruits & how did they keep them as fit as the recruitment poster boys
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‘Much is covered in this fascinating book, which leaves the reader having simultaneously learned a lot and curious to learn more’ (‘Warship Annual’ 2021 Edition review of ‘Fittest of the Fit’)
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Again for a second year the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum is closed on the anniversary of the discovery of penicillin, but the significance of what happened there in 1928 does not diminish. And it will be all the more special when visitors can return and see it themselves
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The Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) by Rembrandt, shows a barber surgeon cutting out the stone as a headache cure or fooling his patient according to a popular saying. The patient was possibly an early portrait of his father.
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“This remarkable book looks at how the Royal Navy coped with keeping the physical and mental health of recruits in tip top form during the Second World War ... this book, expertly written by Kevin Brown, explains why that was so. Fascinating.” (“Books Monthly”)
#WW2
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Manuscripts, physical artefacts & sound complement each other to tell a story that one type of exhibit could not do alone & inspire us to learn more elsewhere, as with Elizabeth & Mary, Royal Cousins,Rival Queens, & Beethoven exhibitions
@britishlibrary
@chiara_sdm
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Today’s City of London worker would not be out of place in the lineup of his banker, stockbroker & clerk predecessors who in 1914 enlisted in the Stockbrokers Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (Ditchers) & took the oath of allegiance in the Tower of London moat. History alive!
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@hen_hank
Susini’s Anatomical. S us is at La Specola, Florence. His Vererina in Bologna. Art and education.
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St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, December 1933, celebrating visit of George V and Queen Mary, almost 90 years ago
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Silver Jubilee of Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, opened 25 years ago on 21 September 1993. Thank you to all the museum guides I have worked with in that time and to all the visitors we have welcomed down the years. Thanks to you all it has been a pleasure.
@ImperialNHS
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Staff & students from Brigham Young University visiting Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum considered it to be "ground zero for antibiotic chemotherapy. Excellent presentation."
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A week for
#Hogarth
: Sunday my talk on Hogarth, Quacks & the Pox
@FoundlingMuseum
; Thursday viewing Hogarth paintings at Barts as guest at Fountain Club summer party ; must revisit Hogarth's House, Chiswick to round it off
@HogarthProgress
@LBofHounslow
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“If those who feel ill would stay at home, if those who are well would avoid railway carriages with windows closed & unventilated trams & buses, if the public would forego picture palaces or other crowded places of amusement so long as the epidemic continues” 1918 advice familiar
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Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum &
@OldOpTheatre
both feature in
@PeterDazeley
"London Uncovered"
@QuartoHolmes
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John Polidori committed suicide 24 August 1821. My talk ‘The Doctor & the Vampyr? The case of Dr John Polidori’, looks at Byron’s doctor who wrote about a vampire that inspired the creation of Dracula & a host of other vampire books – or was his patient actually the true author?
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Friday evening late duties in Duke Humfrey’s Library in 1982/3 certainly made me feel part of a long tradition of Oxford University libraries going beyond Thomas Bodley back to the Middle Ages, maybe not an uninterrupted tradition but a proud one
#OxfordLibrary700
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Find out the stories of naval medical officers such as Christopher Dent lost with Hood & Peter McRae who sacrificed his life on Mahratta in “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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The founder of Methodism John Wesley was a believer in the medical use of electricity & provided therapeutic electrical machines at the free dispensaries he set up for the poor
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World Antibiotic Week 2018: Honoured to be joining the panel for discussion on future of antibiotics at 7 pm on 18 November after
@ThatMould
performance
@Ovalhouse
Lambeth urging wiser use of antibiotics & research into new ones
@TheUrgentNeed
@ImperialMed
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A family from Chile visited the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, the birthplace of penicillin, to show the daughter where her father had visited 13 years ago while waiting for her birth in the nearby maternity wards of St Mary's Hospital
@ImperialNHS
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Congratulations to Ethel Armstrong on the award of the MBE - a great character who worked in the NHS on its first day, still does voluntary work for the NHS and speaks her mind when she thinks it could improve
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John Snow, anaesthetist and epidemiologist, remembered for his studies of cholera epidemics, buried in Brompton Cemetery, his scientific work offers thoughts relevant for today
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The Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, the birthplace of penicillin, may not be open today for Fleming’s birthday, but his birth on 6 August 1881 is marked at his birthplace, Lochfield Farm, Darvel, Ayrshire, by a commemorative stone which I unveiled on its restoration in 2008
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A beer united men of the Allied navies (especially in hot weather): “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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The ramshackle buildings of Hart Hall in Catte Street that collapsed in 1820 were perhaps more picturesque but the frontage of
@HertfordCollege
which replaced it is much more dignified, welcoming, outward-looking and worthy of its location at the heart of Oxford.
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There’s always something about special getting a spontaneous round of applause from groups at the end of a presentation, or do I mean ‘performance’, in the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum. I should be used to it by now but it is always good to get. I feel like an actor.
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A 3 year contract at St Mary’s Hospital, 3 July 1989, to set up an archives service from scratch ... then came setting up the Fleming Museum, editing St Mary’s Gazette, articles, books, lectures, tours, TV appearances ... & now, 30 years later, I wonder where have the years gone?
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Escapism from the uncertainty of the present is needed today as much as ever & Terence Rattigan’s 1943 comedy While the Sun Shines
@OrangeTreeThtr
raises the spirits of Pandemic era audiences as much as it did in wartime. Bombs & blackout then, bugs now, theatre always important.
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“The students thought the small museum very interesting, but especially they enjoyed your speaking and teaching, they learned a lot and were very happy that they got to see it.” Danish school group enjoyed their visit to Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum
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“A very readable book ... a very human story ... should interest not only medical professionals and the wider naval and military community, but anyone interested in large and complex organisations operating under extreme conditions and stress.” (Australian Naval Institute)
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I never seem to escape from the history of penicillin, even at sea in South East Asia - you can take the boy out of Paddington ... but St Mary’s never lets go of you
@inpaddington
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Peter II of Yugoslavia charmed the officers of HMS London by not pulling rank & changing from admiral’s dress to a more modest uniform to fit in with the wardroom: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945” …
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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The Jewel in the Post-War Crown, my
#NHS70
lecture today on the actual 70th anniversary of the inauguration of the NHS to Camden Local History Society, 7.30 pm, 5 July 2018, Holborn Library
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Another filmed interview celebrating the 90th anniversary of
#penicillin
for AP - the challenge is saying something in a different way each time
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"Cutest museum ever. Great very informative tour guide. Very memorable experience". A satisfied visitor to Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum
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My first appearance on in the cast list for Resistance Fighters playing myself as Medical Historian (Historiker) and warning of antibiotic resistance
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It has been a great pleasure as always to welcome engaged, informed & enthusiastic students from Lycee Marguerite de Flandres, Gondecourt as post-Covid they resume their long standing annual visits to the Fleming Museum.
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Joining the phase 3
@Novavax
covid-19 vaccine trials makes me feel I’m doing my bit in a small way in the search for a vaccine that will help us all get back to a more normal life. Volunteers can help.
#BePartOfResearch
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Some good questions from the audience after today’s lecture. Usually on cruise ships they ask questions in private afterwards or when they see you around. This audience seem to have overcome the usual reticence about asking in public & everything has arose naturally from the talk
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"a wonderful museum curator. His explanation and the film were outstanding. The Museum is inspiring." Good personal and museum feedback from Mexican visitors.
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80 years ago on the outbreak of
#WW2
the
#RoyalNavy
prided itself on recruiting only the fittest but how did it maintain its high standards for 6 more years: “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945” …
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
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The undoubted star of Holborn Warship Week 1942 was a model HMS Trinidad made from scrap; Plymouth made do with King Peter II of Yugoslavia: “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945” …
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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@ContamClub
Pleased that you enjoyed your visit. You never know but one of your chance contaminants may be as momentous as Fleming’s was! Never ignore the unexpected however annoying it may seem at first!
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Thirty three years & one day since I started at St Mary’s, & 27 months since the museum closed just before the first lockdown, the Alexander Fleming Laboratory reopens to visitors though by advance appointment only to begin with. Where have the years gone?
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The Spectacle Seller (Allegory of Sight), an early work by the Young Rembrandt, refers to a Dutch phrase about selling glasses meaning deceit with an old man & a blind woman being duped into buying useless spectacles; & was painted over a nude.
@DeLakenhal
@AshmoleanMuseum
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Time for a drink to celebrate the end of my series of lectures on medicine in WWII & After in Far East aboard Nautica sailing in the Opulent Orient. Thank you to passengers for attending the lectures & to the crew
@OceaniaCruises
for making it all such a pleasure
@StarboardSpeaks
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The ship’s surgeon kept sailors healthy, but often found himself bored & underused except when his ship saw action, & then he was all at sea: “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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That is 2 hospital anniversaries I have been involved with, 23 years ago the sesquicentenary of St Mary’s 1845-1995 & now the bicentenary of Charing Cross 1818-2018. Only 10 years to go for the centenary of penicillin, 1928-2028. I feel like I’ve been around for it all - & a day!
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Surgeon William Cheselden operated on the eardrum of Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II, to cure her deafness but ‘the pain of the operation was almost insupportable & the consequence was many weeks’ misery’ leaving her suspicious of all doctors who wanted to remove her ear
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Review of Penicillin Man: “Alexander Fleming's daughter inlaw wouldn't sign another copy of mine, because it was too inaccurate. However the lady recommended this one, commenting that it is the only authentic copy she would sign … Her recommendations were very accurate indeed.”
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The Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum may have been closed to the public since the start of the first lockdown but it remains an inspirational place even more so in time of pandemic.
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“Cacator cave malum”, the goddess Isis Fortuna protected users of a latrine next to a Pompeian kitchen where lack of understanding of food hygiene made dining risky, indeed prey to the danger of a Last Supper in Pompeii
@AshmoleanMuseum
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Visitors to the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum always found it thrilling if they came on the anniversary of the discovery of
#penicillin
, 3 September 1928, but that is not possible this pandemic year with the museum closed. We look forward to welcoming them back for 2021.
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The library of Wimpole Hall, designed by James Gibbs, housed the books & manuscripts of 2 great bibliophiles, Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford whose collections formed the Harleian manuscripts
@britishlibrary
, & of Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, a book lover’s sanctuary
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Medical services were vital to the success of D Day, 6 June 1944
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Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum a not to be missed UK medical tourist attraction
#antibiotics
#InfectionControl
#bacteriology
@Medscape
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Penicillin Man in print again- 2017 reprint of 2013 edition, first published 2004
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The Royal Navy had a lot to learn about ship design from its American ally, except when it came to the abomination of racial segregation: “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
#WW2
#RoyalNavy
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Timely drama
@GreenwichTheatr
of class conflict & war
@IntoBattlePlay
by
@_HughSalmon
played out
@BalliolOxford
& in Great War trenches by dynamic young cast
@JoeyGillX
@nikolas_salmon
@Sam_BarrettUK
@alexpsknox
with resonance of the clownish arrogance of today’s entitled elites
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The importance of libraries for opening up new worlds and ideas still sails on despite the ever present threats to the public library system - education, entertainment, escapism all need access to books.
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Students enjoy their visits to the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum which gets good feedback: “It was a truly inspirational visit and talk and amazing to be in the actual room where Alexander Fleming worked. The students were really enthralled and learned so much.”
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Very enjoyable dinner with museum guides past and present to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, 95 years of penicillin & World Origin Site accreditation of the museum
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‘the visceral experience of being in the lab & your well designed prompts to get them to notice different aspects of it are what really make the experience.I've actually had people say that standing in Fleming's lab was the highlight of our entire UK trip’ (Fleming Museum visit)
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Battle of Britain & Battle of the Atlantic, both crucial for British survival in WWII, plotted & planned in underground
@RoyalAirForce
&
@RoyalNavy
bunkers @ Battle of Britain Bunker, Uxbridge
@BofBBunker
& Western Approaches Museum, Liverpool
@WestApproaches
: evocative sites
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Two days of location shooting as ‘Historiker’ for ‘Resistance Fighters’ for German TV filming at Fleming Museum, Paddington, a South London cinema watching newsreels, and Sandwich, Kent.
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“Finally there is a book which sheds light on what it was really like to serve in the Royal Navy ... It covers virtually every aspect of how the average rating lived ... health, food, those left at home, sex & much more.”(Maritime Quest)
#WW2
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Can’t avoid being recognised today. A French school teacher and her students told me they’d seen me recently on French TV, a German museum visitor said he remembered me from German TV, and a lady came to the Fleming Museum after seeing me on YouTube. No hiding place!
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It seems too insignificant a setting to be a World Origin Site but visitors at the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum climbing the narrow stairs are rewarded when they see the very lab in which penicillin was discovered, the world's first antibiotic
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A visitor to the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum thought that it was ‘the smallest and best museum I know’. Small it may be, but with its international significance it kicks above its weight
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Vi Attlee voted Conservative, Clemmie Churchill was a staunch
Liberal who detested Conservatives, Louis Mountbatten was Labour but his butler was Tory. We could learn lessons about political tolerance for today from the past when partners could openly have such divergent views
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Mature Times article
@maturetimes
celebrating forthcoming 90th anniversary of discovery of penicillin, 3 September 1928, and Silver Jubilee of Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, opened 21 September 1993
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“A passionate storyteller”. I’ll drink to that description of me by an audience
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A mouldy suit would usually be a disaster but 1940 Oxford team working on
#penicillin
smeared suit linings with spores in event of invasion
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Vaughan Williams, Sea Symphony, words by Walt Whitman, musical meditation on man’s place in nature, the cosmos, art, exploration,
@PhiliBoyle
@jamesn103
@BartsChoir
; & Elgar’s stately Enigma Variations,
@royalphilorch
@RoyalAlbertHall
to celebrate 900 years of
@BartsHospital
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Still getting good feedback from readers who enjoyed Penicillin Man even after all these years: “Fleming came across as an endearing, modest but complex character. Very enjoyable read.”
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Hear about Fleming’s penicillin and other more modern Imperial College developments
@imperialcollege
Fringe Festival - Invention Dimension podcast, March 2018
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A positive sign and a compliment being asked after my last lecture, which covered tropical disease and jungle surgery, by a physician whether I am medically qualified as I got the medical detail spot on and spoke with authority.
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Enjoyable afternoon talking to engaged year 7 students
@FeatherstoneHS
about my career journey as archivist & museum curator
@InspiringTF
Good sign that more were interested in a career in archives & museums after my talk than before!
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Providing for the health of Wrens offered new challenges to the Royal Naval Medical Services : “Fittest of the Fit: Health and Morale in the Royal Navy 1939-1945”
@SeaforthPub
@penswordbooks
@HistoryWelfare
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An illustrated talk probably conveys more information but only a museum visit can offer the atmosphere and experience of being in the place where history happened
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