Tolstoy, stories, and facilitating insight in end of life care: Exploring ethics through vicarious experience (with Glackin M and Henry R)

Facilitating moral insight in end of life care can be challenging, and the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this can be nurtured by means of creative literature. Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych is presented as an example of such literature. Aristotle's Nichomean Ethics provides the philosophical underpinning for the method used. Sources also include the nursing literature, and students' evaluations of the impact of Tolstoy's novella on their ability to perceive the ethical issues arising in end of life care. Comments from evaluations were analysed and significant themes emerged. Students' comments clearly support the suggestion that use of this novella has facilitated insight into ethical issues at the end of life. Evaluations also indicate that vicarious experience gained through reading this novella has helped to nurture sensitivity and professional insight into the importance of compassion and offering ‘comfort’ to the dying person.

Keeping it in the Family: Surviving Political Exile, 1870-1917

A sentence of exile was a regular feature of the Russian revolutionary’s underground career. In order to survive this punishment and continue their struggle against Tsarism, revolutionaries relied on help from their fellow exiles, their party, the Political Red Cross and, often, their families. Historians have rarely acknowledged the role of kin in supporting the revolutionary movement and very few studies have noted the attempts by families to mitigate the worst aspects of a sentence of exile. This article explores the ways in which spouses and siblings, parents and children obtained concessions from the Tsarist authorities regarding their loved ones’ sentences of exile, helped off-set the poverty to which many exiles were reduced, and, above all, combated the sense of loneliness and depression to which those in exile were exposed. This article argues that such familial support had a collective and positive impact on revolutionaries’ experience of exile. More broadly it provides an illuminating case study of the blurred space between public and private which the revolutionary occupied and highlights the way in which the movement depended on help from sympathisers and family members in order to function effectively on a daily basis.

Rule Britannia!: British Stock Market Returns, 1825-1870

This article presents a new series of monthly equity returns for the British stock market for the period 1825-1870. In addition to calculating capital appreciation and dividend yields, the article also estimates the effect of survivorship bias on returns. Three notable findings emerge from this study. First, stock market returns in the 1825-1870 period are broadly similar for Britain and the United States, although the British market is less risky. Second, real returns in the 1825-1870 period are higher than in subsequent epochs of British history. Third, unlike the modern era, dividends are the most important component of returns.