Douglas Small

Dr Douglas Small is a historian of medicine and drugs, an academic specialising in Victorian literature, and writer of creative non-fiction. He holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow and was awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Fellowship for his work on cultural histories of cocaine. His monograph Cocaine, Literature, and Culture, 1876-1930 (Bloomsbury, 2024) was shortlisted for the 2025 University English Book Prize.

Douglas’s popular history writing has been featured in BBC History Magazine, History Today, Aeon, American Scientist, and The Conversation. He appeared as an expert on the BBC/PBS documentary, Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle (2023) to solve the mystery of why Arthur Conan Doyle would give Sherlock Holmes a cocaine habit. He has been interviewed for podcasts including Dan Snow’s History Hit, and BBC History Extra, and his research into histories of medicine and drug use has been featured in international news outlets.