Name: Alison Bashford: Decoding the Hand
Start: 2025-11-18T19:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-11-18T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Blackwell's Bookshop

Join Alison Bashford as she talks about the astonishing history of palmistry and biometrics
About this Event

Join history Professor Alison Bashford on Tuesday 18th November at 7pm as she chats to Richard Oosterhoff about her astonishing story of palmistry—from occultists to the very foundations of modern science and medicine, .

Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of the London Zoo, taking hundreds of delicate palm prints? Why did Francis Galton, the father of fingerprinting, take palm prints too? And why did world-leading geneticists study the geometry of palm lines in their search for the secrets of chromosomal syndromes?

Decoding the Handis an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self—a soul, a character, an identity. From sixteenth-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the strange world of hand readers, revealing how signs on the hand—their shape, lines, marks, and patterns—have been elaborately decoded over the centuries.

Doors: 6.30pm, event starts: 7pm, please arrive early to secure a good seat.

Tickets are £5 and there is a Ticket & Book option which includes a signed copy of Decoding the Hand by Alison Bashford.

The bookshop has level access, events are seated and speakers use microphones. If you have any concerns about accessibility, please do get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Refunds are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, we are unable to offer a refund after the event.

For more information or if you would like a signed copy because you can't make it to the event, please contact the Blackwell's events team on 0131 622 8222 or [email protected]