The Freeborn Times | by Amy Freeborn

Phox Pop magazine Issue 5

For all its pre-release hype, the movie ‘Avatar’ turned out to be pretty divisive. And sure, I can accept that it’s a lot of style and special effects over narrative substance, but one part of the plot that I loved…

Bureau Of Memories

Through the largest of Bethlem Hospital’s remaining apple orchards, over badger sets, and past a light pole on which kestrels are often seen perching, can be found a wood pile…

Timorous Beasties

“You don’t go to art school to do wallpaper design. There’s no such thing.” How you become a wallpaper designer, Paul Simmons explains — or at least, how he did — is “by default”…

How A Taste For Pasta Begat Dudes (≈ Hipsters)

The mid-18th Century was what you might call ‘peak Grand Tour’, when the trend for young British men visiting the continent’s most cosmopolitan cities and famous sites was at its height…

Phox Pop magazine Issue 4

Phox Pop is a magazine founded by a woman; editorial and art directed by women; copy checked by women; and, to date, a majority of the content has been produced by women…

Lasting Impressions

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor. At the time of his death in 1931, he had more than 1,000 US patents to his name…

A Growing Galaxy

In the summer of 2016, the Milky Way doubled in size. By which we mean, the number of stars it was previously believed to contain was found to be only about half…

Dedication + Perseverance = Success

Michael Faraday is proof positive that dedication and perseverance pay off. Faraday — physicist, chemist, and founder of the UK Royal Institution’s famous Christmas science lectures — was only educated until the age of 13…

Score 1: Women

‘He managed to become a CEO without sacrificing his masculinity.’ That’s not a sentence anyone is likely to come across in their daily readings. But the same is not true when considering the opposite sex…

X Marks The Spot

This is a tale of two halves. It begins around the turn of the 20th century, with the establishment of a new private printing press near the banks of the Thames…

Phox Pop magazine Issue 3

Three issues in, I guess I really am a magazine publisher now…! This third instalment is inspired in part by the years of my teens and early 20s I spent living by the ocean…

Women’s March On London

Yesterday, around 100,000 women, men, and children marched through the streets of London, in single-figure temperatures, to affirm that women’s rights are human rights…

Photographic Revolution

Edwin Herbert Land was a visionary scientist and inventor who 70 years ago changed the picture-taking habits of people around the world, the result of which is still felt today…

Can’t Touch This

In the editorial we made mention of the lovely paper this issue of Phox Pop magazine is printed on. If you take a moment to move your finger back and forth a little…

Kepler’s Cosmic Cup

There was a time when astrology and astronomy were not so scientifically, diametrically opposed. A time when Johannes Kepler wrote horoscopes for the royal court while also writing requests to the Duke for money…