Louise Foxcroft

Louise Foxcroft is a historian, non-fiction writer and broadcaster specialising in medical perceptions of the human body and the way these have influenced our experience, assumptions and attitudes. Her doctorate is from the University of Cambridge and her books include, The Making of Addiction: the “use and abuse” of opium in nineteenth-century Britain (Ashgate, 2007)); Hot Flushes, Cold Science: a history of the modern menopause (Granta, 2009), which won the Longman/History Today book of the year award 2009; Calories & Corsets: a history of dieting over 2,000 years (Profile, 2012), shortlisted for a Food Writer’s Guild book prize 2013; Sexuality: all that matters (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014); The Serpentine, Or, The Attractions of Water (Honeybee Books, 2015); and The Irish Pasha, based on the memoir of ‘Pum’ Gayer-Anderson, with Unbound Books. Louise has written for The Times, the Independent, the Observer, the Guardian, the New Scientist online, the London Review of Books and the New Humanist among others, and has appeared on BBC, ITV, RTE, and Al Jazeera English with Sir David Frost. She has taken part in BBC radio programmes including The Medicalisation of Normality, Am I Normal?, Woman’s Hour, Open Country, You & Yours, Inside Science and The Long View. As a non-alcoholic trustee for Alcoholics Anonymous, GB, 2005–2010, she spoke at national and international conferences, at the Senedd, Cardiff Bay, at Holyrood and at Portcullis House, Westminster. She lives in Cambridge and is company secretary of Village Underground, a non-profit space for creativity in the heart of east London.