iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

What would his grandmother Queen Victoria have thought of young Prince Arthur of Connaught being tattooed on his 1906 official visit to Japan with image of Fudō Myō-ō (Buddhist "god of fire") wielding a flaming sword, symbol of spiritual strength & protection against evil forces?

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Owner of a model-making business & Fabian socialist, Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke on his marriage in 1917 commissioned Charlie’s Rennie Macintosh to remodel his small Northampton terraced house in Modernist style with striking interiors

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A very personal glimpse of Egypt c.300 BC offered by the toes peeping out of the wrappings of the mummy of a man in his 20s with injuries to his jaw, ribs & thumb buried in the coffin of priest Pa-Er-Abu given to Haslemere Educational Museum in 1912 by the Sunday School Society

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The veneration of the cat in pharaonic Egypt left its mark in feline statues, the mummification of cats, special sarcophagi and their interment in cat cemeteries

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Exhibitions of the treasures of Tutankhamen & Ramses lI have whetted my desire to explore the archaeology of the Valley of the Kings, but circumstances have again thwarted the best of plans so on a day I hoped to realise this dream I will bury myself in books on Egyptology

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Pleasing that the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum and the heritage of the hospital are integral to the latest master plan for the redevelopment of St Mary’s Hospital www.stmarys.imperial.nhs.uk/media/0dkop5...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“The best armour of old age is a well spent life preceding it; a life employed in the pursuit of useful knowledge, in honourable actions and the practice of virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his youth, will in age reap the happiest fruits of them” (Cicero)

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“We owe our early & middle manhood to our country, our last years are due to ourselves. When shall I attain the age at which I may honourably retire? When shall I be able to enjoy calm retreat without people calling it not peaceful tranquillity but laziness & sloth?” (Pliny the Younger)

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sea Ailments: “health & medical care are being delivered without any outside help. And also the contained world of a ship meant they could experiment with ways to deliver better health care because there were fewer variables.” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/h... omny.fm/shows/health...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Remembered for Hutchinson’s Triad of notched teeth, keratitis & nerve deafness as signs of congenital syphilis, surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson’s interests ranged across many medical specialties; his enquiring attitude to nature & history led him to found Haslemere Educational Museum

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Engaging with the public & sharing a personal passion for a subject is what makes a good museum curator. Ornithologist Robert Blockey inspired young visitors to Haslemere Educational Museum in the 1930s by showing them the falcon on his arm & letting it soar to their wonderment

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Talking to Lauren Bristow about the ever fascinating history of health at sea for “Health Wanted” broadcast from Atlanta, Georgia by WABE, National Public Radio, & Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University www.wabe.org/podcasts/hea...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One of the joys of researching & writing about the history of maritime health & medicine has been being able to range widely both chronologically & across medical, social & naval history with a bit of politics occasionally thrown in

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A lonely coffee cup in a deserted courtyard. I should have been enjoying a return to the Aegean this week but sailing on Oceania Nautica from Piraeus to Doha while lecturing was never going to happen given the international situation, leaving only memories of previous visits to the area.

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Death be not proud”: standing beneath his effigy is a suitable place to consider John Donne’s reflection on mortality that “when youth’s wasted, Age and you shall meet; then I alone shall sadly moan”

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Florence Nightingale is remembered & idealised as a nurse yet perhaps her greatest contribution to health & medicine was wider as an epidemiologist & statistician whose ideas for reform were based on hard evidence

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In his lifetime Almroth Wright liked to keep his ever loyal protege Alexander Fleming in his place, even belittling him at times, yet it was Fleming who achieved the greater fame & whose discovery of penicillin was to lead to a more lasting legacy

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Is it really 33 years since the opening of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, half a lifetime, the focus of a career?

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“Men moralise among ruins, or, in the throng & tumult of successful cities, recall past visions of urban desolation for prophetic warning. London is a modern Babylon; Paris has aped imperial Rome, & may share its catastrophe” (Disraeli, “Tancred”, 1847). Moralise, romanticise or fantasise?

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

How heroism was constructed & portrayed after the sinking of Titanic, the social reality behind the myths, explored by Kevin Brown, author of “Titanic: Ship of Lost Illusions” www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Titanic-Ship...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Watching a modern stage performance of “Three Men in a Boat” takes me back to studying the book at school in 3rd year English Literature. It seemed like a period piece with its very English humour even then back in 1975

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Catherine of Braganza supported the clandestine nunnery & convent school established in 1669 in the Great House at Hammersmith next to Cupola House residence of the Portuguese ambassador

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

When the schools run by religious orders in France were suppressed & their assets confiscated in 1904 the nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart smuggled their 1861 pipe-organ by Hippolyte Lorat from Paris & altar to be re-erected in the chapel of their school in Hammersmith

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Louis the Great (1326-82), King of Hungary, Croatia 1342-82 & Poland 1370-82, portrayed in the manuscript he commissioned of “Secretum Secretorum”, supposed to be advice from Aristotle to Alexander the Great, donated by Edmund Hall in 1658 to Magdalen Hall, Oxford

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

For Mark Twain “What can be more depressing than the sombre black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows & is just about as inspiring.” Yet individuality triumphs over uniformity among men in black tie

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Lighten our darkness … and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

John Donne’s funerary effigy showing the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral wrapped in his shroud, a survivor of the Fire of London, is a contrast to the fashionably dressed metaphysical poet when a younger man

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A protege of Horatio Nelson, Captain William Hoste was the father of Priscilla Hoste whose relationship with the 2nd Earl of Kilmorey who built a mausoleum for his mistress caused a scandal

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Horatio Nelson and Cuthbert Collingwood were both loved by their crews for their attention to the health of their seamen www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Seasick-...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

In the the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral at Night a researcher into the medical history of Nelson and the health of the navy in sombre mood next to the tomb of the Seasick Admiral & his memorial

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Paying respects to Alexander Fleming at St Paul’s Cathedral at Night

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

“One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons; A natural perspective, that is, and is not!” Different suit and tie, but someone pointed out a portrait that could be of my art gallery doppelgänger thanks to facial similarities though I’m not convinced myself

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The Kilmorey Mausoleum, exotically built in 1854 in fashionably romantic Egyptian style to house the remains of the earl of Kilmorey & his younger mistress Priscilla Hoste, was twice moved from Brompton Cemetery then to the grounds of Kilmorey’s various homes.

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The allure of ancient Egyptian culture has exerted a fascination on the imagination for thousands of years, influenced art and architecture through archaeolgical discovery, and conferred a timeless glamour on all connected with it 𓎡𓇋𓆑𓇌𓈖𓀀

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

“Under the greenwood tree … Who doth ambition shun And loves to live i' the sun” If only we could leave behind the stresses & cares of a busy life for simpler natural pleasures … if only

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Whether in the informal daytime individuality of the lounge suit or the uniformity of evening dress, an Edwardian gentleman “felt secure in an unimpugnable suit of clothes; in the shape of his collar, the colour of his necktie, the style of his creaseless boots” (Arnold Bennett)

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The exquisite of 1911 was “too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else … he cared for his wardrobe & his toilet-table … merely as a means through which he could intensify a ritual in which to express & realise his own idolatry” (Max Beerbohm)

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Edward Halliday’s 1937 Conversation Piece showing students at Worcester College, Oxford, was restaged for a 1979 photograph & reimagined by Jada Richard to reflect the more diverse student body of 2024, reflecting social changes over 87 years, especially within the last 45 years

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Nuffield College was planned in 1937 in a mellow Cotswold style but with a striking tower & spire & its chapel with stained glass windows by John Piper that reflect the light of learning are much more modern in tone

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Rhodes House, in arts & crafts style, rises beyond its imperialist origins to be a centre of global fraternal scholarship; I have happy memories of using the then Rhodes House Library to study American history in the atmosphere of a country house library

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Howard Florey felt he never got his due recognition for penicillin yet he was knighted, made a life peer, elected as president of Royal College of Pathologists & Provost of The Queens College Oxford; his Sir William Dunn School of Pathology colleagues deserved more than they ever got

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The pleasure of reading en plain air, enjoying good literature, fresh air and sylvan surroundings

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Henry Moore designed & created his sculptures to be part of the landscape that inspired them & liked working with natural materials

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

"The suits were blue, grey & brown; but were alike in being severely, even skimpily, cut, & in being very new. The young men who wore them, & wore them newly too, were not alike” - post-war demobbed men in Priestley’s “Three Men in New Suits”, idealism, uniformity & individualism

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

In “A Woman of No Importance” Lord Illingworth states “the future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule” but Gerald replies “I should like to wear nice things awfully, but I have always been told that a man should not think too much about his clothes.”

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

For a writer more often associated with light drawing room comedy, Oscar Wilde wittily addressed social & moral questions such as hypocrisy in public life, the social status of women, & illegitimacy as in “A Woman of No Importance” (1893)

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The making of contrasting heroes from Titanic victims, the dashing debonair dandy Victor Penasco who fitted the heroic mould & the retiring bibliophile Harry Widener who had to be reinvented as a new kind of hero www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Titanic-Ship...

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Aristocratic sportsman & would be politician Tyrell Cavendish was portrayed as a swashbuckling hero on little evidence by the press after his death on Titanic, middle class Christopher Head was remembered for his achievements as barrister, insurance broker & as mayor of Chelsea

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Born on Christmas Day 1869 at Stoke Newington, christened at the Gothic Revival St Mary’s New Church on 16 January 1870, perished amidst the luxury of Titanic on 15 April 1912, Christopher Head is commemorated by a plaque in the Norman simplicity of St Nicholas’ Church, Old Shoreham

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Kevin Brown @kevin-brown.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Christopher Head’s “interests were chiefly artistic, & he used his interest & knowledge in the best possible way for the public good when he was Mayor of Chelsea, & made his influence felt by imparting some quite new & much-needed ideals into that civic office”, unsung hero of local government

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