Simplify your life

Laurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen, Ben Anderson and Tiffany Boyle discuss the Life Reform Movement. Ideas included arguments for a basic income, healthy eating, gymnastics, world peace and what a perfect body looked like. The movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century and was a loose collection of groups and individuals who pursued social reform of all kinds and their ideas were mainly Utopian, but had a darker side. Annebella Pollen teaches at Brighton University and is the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians Elsa Richardson teaches at the University of Strathclyde and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to promote research on radio Ben Anderson teaches at Keele University and is also a New Generation Thinker Tiffany Boyle is a curator, researcher and writer at The Glasgow School of Art and her interdisciplinary doctoral research examines the visual representations of artistic gymnastics