APPEALS: Freud Museum, in Hampstead, London.

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Sigmund Freud's couch covered in an oriental rug, his chair and desk with his collection of antique Greek, Egyptian, Roman and oriental figures and heads, at the Freud Museum, in Hampstead, London. The museum is in the house Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) bought and moved into in 1938 after the Nazi occupation of Austria had forced him and his family to leave Vienna - Hitler had banned psychoanalysis in 1933. A year later Freud died and his daughter Anna, who was already contributing to the development of child psychology, took up his mantle by remaining in the house and keeping her father's study and library as it had been during his life. Four years after Anna's death in 1982, the house became the Freud Museum in acknowledgement of Britain's role in giving the Freud family a haven.

The museum also contains Freud's working library brought over in 1938, including the family bible and several first editions of Freud's books, some of which bear his signature or notes. On display is much of the family's furniture, pictures and some of Freud's 3,000 photographs. Anna Freud's room contains her desk, chair, consulting couch and weaving loom, which is still used by one of her friends. A temporary exhibition, 'Freud and his Time', is at present on display: it ties in with The Diary of Sigmund Freud 1929-1939 published by the Hogarth Press last year.

Open from 12pm to 5pm, Wednesday to Sunday, the museum is urgently appealing for pounds 59,000 to pay for basic running costs, such as staff salaries: running costs this year will be about pounds 232,000. The museum relies largely on donations and wants to create an endowment in the future. For further information, contact: The Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX, telephone 071-435 2002.

The Laurence Sterne Trust, which owns and runs Shandy Hall, in North Yorkshire, the home of the 18th-century writer Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), is holding an exhibition of recent paintings all inspired by the garden at Shandy Hall. Opening on Monday 10 May and continuing until 30 September, the exhibition will raise funds for the trust's appeal to maintain the gardens: all of the 130 watercolour, pastel, oil or gouache works by Alan Hitchcock, John Hutchinson, Alan Luty, John Langton and Patrick Nuttgens and others will be for sale. At the same time, visitors can view Sterne's house and two-acre garden. Sterne, who lived at Shandy Hall from 1760 to 1767 and wrote A Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy there, once wrote to a friend: 'If you honour me with a letter it will find me either pruneing (sic), digging, or weeding, or wheeling away Rubbish.'

The Laurence Sterne Trust, Shandy Hall, Coxwold, York YO6 4AD, telephone 0347 868465.

Angels International, an international charity specialising in helping children with cancer, leukaemia or with other acute or terminal diseases or disabilities, is holding a fund-raising piano recital at 7.30pm on Tuesday 11 May at St John's, Smith Square, London. Stefan Warzycki will play music by Liszt, Scriabin and Chopin. Angels International is appealing for medical supplies for the hospital in Mostar, in Bosnia, where doctors work underground to avoid shelling. Also, funds for drugs are needed for Upper Silesia, in Poland, where leukaemia cases amongst children have doubled in the last 12 years. Tickets, from pounds 6, are available from the St John's, Smith Square, box office, telephone 071-222 1061.

Angels International, PO Box 19, Petworth, West Sussex GU2 OAQ, telephone 0798 44417.

Joanna Gibbon

The Independent welcomes details of appeals from readers. They should be sent in writing (no more than 100 words) to Gazette (Appeals), The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB (fax 071-956 9358). Please include a daytime telephone number.