A FASCINATING and richly researched historical account of one of Britain’s best known mental institutions, focusing on our changing attitudes and treatment of the insane.

Bethlem Hospital, or “Bedlam” as it is better known, is the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, opening in 1247 as a hovel before developing into a magnificent Palace Beautiful, where naked deranged patients were paraded to a fee-paying public.

By the Victorian era the hospital had moved to Lambeth and is now the Imperial War Museum.

For over eight centuries treatment for the insane has ranged from eating roast mice to leechings and exorcisms, as well as the private madhouse run by traders in lunacy.