Well-being Past and Present: The History and Contemporary Practice of a Cultural Phenomenon in Britain

In this exciting interdisciplinary volume, researchers, archivists, curators and social scientists offer a fresh exploration of the concept of well-being in Britain throughout history and in the present day.

Well-being Past and Present examines the various ways well-being has been invoked as a concept or term throughout historical periods, attending to its multifarious meanings and its significance on the way we live our lives. Focusing on the interactions between historical research and heritage and archival methods and practices, the volume bridges the gap between historical experiences of well-being and contemporary well-being interventions by institutions and communities.

Across sixteen chapters the authors in Well-being Past and Present travel from the battlefield to the library, the orchard to the archive, and the country house to the hospital ward, examining well-being’s own historical and contemporary position in discourses like leisure, health and happiness.

The key questions this volume asks are: has the concept of well-being become too nebulous to carry any real meaning? What happens to the term when we place it in the range of very different contexts that it finds a home in? How do past discourses of well-being connect to the present? How widely is well-being and associated activities spread across our diverse societies?

Well-being Past and Present is a timely volume and contributes not just to our historical understanding of well-being but how we can utilise history and heritage to establish communities of care in Britain.

• Publication date: 16 October 2025
• Page count: 264
• Dimensions: Height 241 mm; Width 165 mm; Thickness 23 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781350499843