The Last Asylum

Blending personal memoir with social history, the author shares an “exquisitely written and provocative” account of mental illness and care ( Sunday Times , UK). In the late 1970s, Barbara Taylor, then an acclaimed young historian, began to suffer from severe anxiety. Eventually, her struggles led her to be admitted to the infamous Friern Mental Hospital in North London—once known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. The Last Asylum is a candid account of her time there, and probing look at the e