Explore every episode of the podcast Bedside Reading
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Educated by Tara Westover is one of those books which has really stayed with me since I first read it back in 2018. It's also a book that I just assumed when I started this podcast that somebody would approach me and want to talk about.
It feels astonishing that we've got as far as season 11 before anybody has asked to come on and discuss it. I'm glad I waited, though, because I've thoroughly loved my conversation with Syba Sunny today about the book and about some of the themes.
We think about acceptance. We think about education. We think about self-motivation in learning. The ideas of hiding in plain sight. What is safeguarding? What is not safeguarding? And how do you norm reference a family? It's a brilliant book, and I've really enjoyed thinking about it.
Welcome to November 2025 and season 11 of the podcast,. We are celebrating our 4th Birthday in November and my guest today, Claire Le Day aka GP Steph celebrates her 40th birthday in November. Claire/Steph is here to talk about her fabulous med school diaries which have been published as Fear and Loathing in Plymouth. If you are looking for a book to make you think, to take you on a trip back down memory lane, to remember what it was like to be a teenager, to cringe alongside Steph as she recalls some of the excesses of her first and second year at Peninsula Medical School, really this is a great book to be picking up.
So Happy birthday, Claire. Welcome to season 11 of the podcast and Fear and Loathing in Plymouth. Let's go.
Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshanathan, which won the Women's Prize last year, was my absolute top read of 2024. It's been a real joy to revisit it today with Kathleen Weneden to think about the wonders of the storytelling and the importance of hearing stories from the perspective of people who often do not have their own narratives captured,
Some of the themes in Brotherless Night, have really, really stayed with me. This is an absolutely phenomenal novel. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's been a real privilege to talk to Kathleen about it and to think about things that are all relevant to all of us from this novel.
Andy is a gamer, I am not. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was a bit of a hit on instagram early in 2023 with the main critics complaining it's all about gaming. I loved it! It was fascinating to discuss with Andy from his perspective of having truly connected with some of the characters' own experiences.
It's such a treat to welcome back Ana Sampson for a dive into ideas for your Jolabokaflod. As happens every time I speak to Ana we set out to think about a few books - the brief today was 5 - and end up side tracked and delighted to talk about more.
Ana's own poetry collection Gods and Monsters is definitely up there for me as a book to buy (or request...)
You can buy your Christmas Books wherever you most enjoy shopping but here's a link to my favourite independent bookshop's storefront on the fabulous bookshop.org platform https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/scarthinbooks
We talked about:
Gods and Monsters curated by Ana Sampson
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Beasts of Paris by Stef Penny Skip to the End by Molly James
Oliver Sacks classic book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat is one of the absolute classic texts in the genre of stories from the humanity of medicine. It's fascinating to go back to it with the mind of someone working in 2023.
It was lovely to connect with Neurologist Louisa Kent to think about our responses to it and our perceptions of the way the book is written and the huge changes that have occurred in the last 20 years.
A confession, I don't like Greek mythology. AT ALL. I did however love this book both when I first read it 10 years ago and on re-reading for this podcast.
Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath. They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.
Ellie Hothersall and I had such a brilliant conversation about expectations, life scripts, stubbornness, the need to say sorry (and mean it!) and why some stories never ever grow old.
It was a huge privilige to meet Rowena Christmas aka "the doctor" from Polly Moreland's wonderful book A Fortunate Woman.
Among other things we talk about John Berger's original book A Fortunate Man, living and working locally to your practice, the joys of continuity, community and the wonderful weird world of being a GP.
It was an honour when paeditrician Cristina approached me on Instagram to tell me how much Loveless had meant to her when she listened to it by accident on a long commute and suddenly jigsaw pieces of her own life fell into place.
We talk about the importance of representation in fiction, the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity and what it means to be asexual (which includes busting myths around asexuality and celibacy)
It's Ace week from 22-28th October 2023 have a look here for more info https://aceweek.org/
When Claire McKie recommended Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Remen to me I realised she wasn't the first person who'd suggested it and somehow it had drifted down my to-read pile. I'm actually embarrassed it took me so long to realise it was almost everything I'd been looking at in a book to dip in and out of and to recommend endlessly to others.
There's a global flavour to today - me in the UK, Claire in Australia discussing a book written by a physician from the USA.
Claire and I had a fabulous conversation about conversations and stories. We explore the power of listening and of stories to help us make sense of the world as well as talking about the way that revisiting old favourites often shows us different perspectives on something that seems familiar.
we also thought about the other books with which we'd file this on a helf: Listen by Kathryn Mannix, Self Compassion by Kristen Neff, Time to Think by Nancy Kline and Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown - all of which have been covered as previous episodes of this podcast and might eb worth going back to.
What a book! Anna Kent's Frontline Midwife blew me away. Getting to meet her to record this conversation was just phenomenal.
Her publishers blurb reads: "At twenty-six years old, Anna Kent helped a woman deliver her baby in a tropical storm by the light of a headtorch. At age thirty she would be responsible for the female health of 30,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. But returning to work for the NHS in the UK, she soon learned that even at home the right to a safe birth was impossible to take for granted. Frontline Midwife is Kent's compassionate testament to the critical work of healthcare professionals around the world." and if that wasn't enough to suck you in.
This conversation does cover some triggering themes - we talk about maternal and child mortality, about healthcare worker trauma, burnout, moral injury and PTSD.
Ash Bainbridge is an agender parent, student midwife, and advocate for language as safety, progress, and glue. They join me today to discuss Dr Meera Shah's phenomenal book "you're the only one I've told - stories of abortion".
We talk about the potential taboos that still abound in maternity care, the importance of hearing intersectional stories from a range of people, the way we both believe passionately that you cannot dissociate termination of pregnancy from maternity and so much more.
I'm delighted to welcome Jo Rose to the podcast to talk about The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clark. This is an incredibly moving book which I was delighted to see won the 2025 Women's Prize for non-fiction. It interweaves the stories of two children, Kiera and who has died after a road traffic accident, and Max, who has cardiomyopathy, severe heart failure, and is awaiting a heart transplant.
This is the story of how Kiera's heart becomes Max's heart, along with an incredible supporting cast of clinicians and of families, and with segues out into the history of transplant, the origins of ATLS, and It is astonishingly moving and beautiful book, which I absolutely adored. It was such a great joy to talk to Jo about it and revisit it and think again of the beautiful storytelling and the importance of this type of story.
Hollie McNish https://holliepoetry.com/ is a poet, performer and writer. Her collection Slug (and other things I've been told to hate) made me laugh, cry, rage and so much more.
I loved talking to Sarah Goulding about it and talking about life, relationships, parenting, growing up, swearing, being female, death, puberty, masturbation, owning words and so much more.
Today's episode was made possible by the power of the platform formerly known as Twitter (which I can't bear to refer to by its new name and logo but that's a whole other story)
I was blown away by Tim Ewins' novel Tiny Pieces of Enid which I was given by a friend a few weeks ago. As the excessive extrovert that I am, I NEEEDED to talk about it and turned to twitter and a "has anyone read this? Who can I talk about it with?" post was responded to in moments by none other than Tim himself!!!
Tiny Pieces of Enid is primarily a love story with at it's heart Enid and Roy, an elderly couple whose world is about to be torn in two by the realisation that they cannot stay living in their home together. Theirs is a story familiar to many of us who work in the community, but hearing their voices and seeing their responses through their eyes is so important.
Among other things we mention how well this book would fit in a trio with Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey and Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon, the ideas of allowing acceptable risks to be taken by older adults as explored in Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.
You can buy Tiny Pieces of Enid (and the other three slightly related books!) here from my favourite bookshop or from any other bookshop you choose: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/scarthinbooks
Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
It was a great pleasure to welcome Sabina Dosani back to Bedside reading this week to talk about Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.
We discuss sex, bodies, intersectionality, expectations and how we make sense of narratives when we dislike the protagonists (much like how we connect with patients we don't like)
‘Ultimately, my experiences as a mental health nurse have taught me that we should judge less and open our hearts more.’
Belinda Black was just seventeen years old when she began working as a nursing assistant at the large and foreboding ‘madhouse’, as it was then known to the villagers of her hometown in the north of England. Following in the footsteps of her mother, she went on to spend a decade caring for patients with widely varying mental health problems, all locked up together and out of view of society. Some had suffered unimaginable trauma, several had violent and volatile tendencies, but amongst this Belinda found moments of joy and even friendship with her patients.
Together, against a backdrop of rattling keys, clanging iron doors, and wards that smelled of disinfectant and stale smoke, these people came together to get through another day. Until the hospital, along with many others, had its doors closed in 1991 – the biggest change to mental healthcare in NHS history.
The result is a moving, shocking but ultimately life-affirming account of a unique and noble profession, told from the frontlines.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Belinda about her accidental career, the stories she has collected, the relationships and camaraderie of her career and the value if keeping compassion at the heart of everything we do.
There are few people on #MedTwitter as passionate about children's books as I am but today I have completely met my match in the utterly fabulous Bipolar Doc. If you follow her already she will need no introduction as one of the most thoughtful, thought provoking, kind and reflective accounts to follow. If not, find her here:
We are talking about Onjali K Rauf's masterful children's novel The Star Outside my Window which follows the adventures of 10 year old Aniyah and her little brother Noah as they navigate the foster care system after the death of their mum, and go on a big old adventure to try and name a new star in her memory.
It's a wonderful novel and Onjali Rauf is not just a great writer but an wonderful human who runs the charity https://makingherstory.org.uk/
The Lost Properties of Love by Sophie Ratcliffe defies classification. This is a gorgeous book, part memoir, part journey with links and musings on many other books, themes and ideas. GP Sue Potter joined me to talk about it.
We talk about heroes, being a fangirl, journeys, reflections on life, motherhood, success and so much more.
Delia Owens' 2018 coming of age novel Where the Crawdads Sing has sold an incredible 18 million copies and was released as a film in 2022. I'm joined this week by GP Rosemary Hickman to discuss ACEs, being transported to another world, illiteracy, secrets and so much more.
If you've not already read the novel it would be a great pick for a summer holiday read. The film adaptation is utterly beautiful too.
Bonnie Garmus' debut novel about chemist Elizabeth Zott, co-narrated by Six-Thirty the dog who must be one of the most fabulous anthrpomomorphised animals in a novel continues to be THE book club book of the moment. Found on every bookshops bestseller shelf, impossible to miss in the supermarket or in airport bookshops it sold 220, 000 copies in hardback in the UK and appears beside sunloungers the world over as the perfect holiday read. What better book to discuss in the first week of August therefore as we all plan our summer reading?
I'm delighted to welcome back Kathleen Wenaden, GP and poet from London to discuss this book which I will admit, I raced through, enjoyed but do not love.....
We mentioned the brilliant Oncology Book Club on Twitter, find them here https://twitter.com/BookOncology (you don't need to be an oncologist to join in)
I loved talking to London GP Eugenia Lee about Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon,
In this fabulous YA novel we meet Madeline Whitter who spends her whole life inside a bubble, with her mother. Madeline has a rare immune deficiency and cannot remember ever leaving her home. Shortly after Madeleine’s 18th birthday, a new family moves in next door. A young and seemingly depressed teenage girl, a violent and alcoholic father, a weak and incapable mother but most importantly a boy who is wild, clever and very good looking. A few weeks pass and Madeline starts to learn more and more about the family as she watches them from her bedroom window. Ollie, the boy next door, starts to talk too Madeline over IM. They grow closer and closer but the fact that Madeline is severely ill prevents them from being together.
We talk about adolescent health, fabricated and induced illness, communicating with teenagers.
This is a wonderful short novel, easy to read, immediately engaging which really packs a punch.
The RCPCH guidelines on perplexing presentations and FII can be found here:
I've got two guests with me today, Joanna Bircher and Ben Allen, two GPs who are talking about a book they've both been involved in. Joanna is one of the co-editors of a collection of stories from leaders in Primary Care. The stories featured are not just from GPs, there's a really, really wide range of primary care professionals talking about leadership and what leadership means for them in a really practical sense of how they have done the things that they've done.
It was a really, really fabulous conversation to have with the two of them, thinking about what leadership is, why it's so important to remember that you can't be what you can't see, and why our perception of leadership actually might be holding us back from being the leader that we could be.
Welcome to Season 5 - I'm so excited!! 85 episodes, 4 seasons complete and now it's time for season 5.
I'm joined today by `Nuthana Bhayankaram, Vice President of the Medical Women's Federation and host of their podcast. We are talking about Nuthana's favourite novel: Pride and Prejudice and I have to confess it's the very first time on this podcast that I've not managed to finish the book before the interview (I did finish it the next week actually!)
We talk about "failure" to finish a novel, whether Pride and Prejudice is like Marmite (or Center Parcs) sexism, aspiration, ambition and why Elizabeth Bennett is a trail blazing hero...
A cracking novel to finish season 4. This is a book about community, about values, ambition, and also about hockey (but do not let that put you off if you aren't into sport). It's the first in a trilogy by the brilliant Fredrik Backman and is pretty much unputdownable.
Francesca Boffey and I have incredibly overlapping taste in books and it's taken us such a long time to pick which book would be "the one" to discuss on Bedside Reading. I'm hoping she might come back again to discuss another one in future.
We talk about community, small town mentality, toxic masculinity, what defines success, who we believe, control, friendship, what people give up for others, retirement, identity, doing the right thing... There's an almost endless source of CPD discussion here and we struggled not to talk for hours.
It's a big "welcome back!!" this week to Charley Baker, Associate Professor of Mental Health at The University of Nottingham and self confessed "book pusher".
We're talking about a fabulous collection of short stories titled Cat Brushing written by retired Psychotherapist Jane Campbell.
We talk about the invisibility of older women, taboo subjects, the darkness of imagination and why short stories are the perfect way to get back into reading if for some reason your concentration isn't what it might be
A lone astronaut. An impossible mission. An ally he never imagined.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it's up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he's got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
It was great fun this week to record with Mark Shapiro, host of the pheomenonally successful podcast Explore the Space https://www.explorethespaceshow.com/ which has a mission of "Examining the interface between healthcare & society, with thought leaders from across the spectrum."
This was one of the first Sci-Fi genre novels I've ever picked up and I admit I was well out of my comfort zone with a lot of the theoretical physics (which Mark tells me I don't need to understand, just believe). Project Hail Mary is at its heart a book about connection and about the value of saving our planet, and humanity. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation about the amazing community of practice that is #MedTwitter, the joy of reading, accidental CPD, equity, climate change and so much more.
Nancy Kline's Time to Think is probably the non fiction book which has most changed my clinical and teaching/mentoring practice ever. It was a huge treat to discuss it with Martin Billington and to discover it had had a similar effect on him.
Focussing on the principles that "The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking" has change both of us for the better (though we did acknowledge that if we both listened intently and didn't say anything the podcast wouldn't be the most interesting thing to listen to!)
The Netflix adaptation of Alice Oseman's Heartstopper graphic novels was the highlight of my TV watching year last year and I was so delighted to realise they were based on a wonderful series of graphic novels.
This winter is a tiny novella which packs a punch and has some of the most powerful "voice of the young person" writing I've encountered in a long while. In a special episode for Pride month I'm delighted to welcome GP ST3 Ellie Corso to talk about adolescents, eating disorders, scaffolding and so much more.
I hope you'll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Locally to where I work we have the superb charity First Steps whose website is a mine of resources even if you aren't fortunate enough to be in Derbyshire https://firststepsed.co.uk/
This episode was planned anyway but it feels only right to share during Pride Month as part of the importance of us all reflecting on LGBTQI+ themes and health
This Child of Ours by Sadie Pearce was suggested to us by the parent of a trans child who had found the novel really reflective of their own experiences. Sadly this medical parent felt unable to breach their child's confidentiality by discussing it themselves. Ana and I were really honoured to have the recommender's thoughts and reflections based on their lived experiences to consider as we read the novel.
Described in a review as: 'An honest, brave and much needed account of what it feels like to live with severe social anxiety. Having a male writer dealing so openly with topics like social anxiety, shyness, introversion and sensitivity is sadly all too rare and makes this book all the more of a triumph.' by Tom Falkenstein, Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist & author of The Highly Sensitive Man, Redface is Russell Norris'account of how he learned to live with his social anxiety and extreme blushing. Shining a light into the deeper, darker corners of someone's brain as they reflect honestly on some very difficult times, maladaptive coping mechanisms and searches for cures Redface takes us along Russell's journey with him.
I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Russell and am sure his book will be a regular bibliotherapy title for me to share with others. Follow Russell on twitter: https://twitter.com/Ruzz_Norris
We tend to surround ourselves with people we identify with, in appearance, beliefs and perspective. This subconscious habit, known as homophily, occurs because it’s validating to have our own ideas reflected back to us by the people around us, whether it’s friends, family or colleagues. But the truth is that homophily significantly inhibits the success of a team.
It was a treat to get to discuss Matthew Syed's brilliant book with James Thambyrajah and to think about why it's so relevant to us in healthcare working in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment so much of the time
This week I'm joined by Belfast GP Susan Buchanan to discuss Bruce Parry and Oprah Winfrey's bestselling book What Happened to You.
This is an accessible and engaging book written in the format of stories and conversations between Dr Parry and Oprah which means that a lot of complex and deep information is made really clear and easy to follow.
This is a book all about ACEs and why they matter but is also full of hope and kindness. It's one that has made me a better doctor and one I would absolutely recommend to some patients too
A warm welcome back to the podcast today to novelist Rebecca Wait. We are today talking about her fabulous novel Havoc, which was published in July 2025. We recorded it just before it was released into the world. As this episode goes out it's been flying off the shelves for a few weeks now. It is an excellent, excellent book.
If you are looking for something to pack and take on holiday with you, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is the absolutely compelling and completely bonkers story of Ida, a teenager from the north of Scotland who feels she needs to get away from her life and writes to a variety of girls' boarding schools in England desperate to go somewhere else and to escape. Out of the frying pan into the fire, she ends up at an incredibly eccentric, failing, small girls boarding school in the south of England, where all sorts of things start to happen.
It is such a brilliantly written novel. I absolutely loved it. And I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to Rebecca today about it.
This week a massive thank you and well done to Lewi Gee my amazing sound editor who tackled a recording which had been horribly messed up by a combination of technology failure and terrible Islay weather and my guest using a not very good satellite link!
It's a huge pleasure to welcome back remote and rural GP Catriona Davis to talk about Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel, a retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield set in Appalachia in the opiate epidemic of the early 21st Century.
It's a brilliant book with such a huge amount to discuss. It's dark, it's deep, it's thought provoking and also filled with light.
I'm joined this week by counsellor Bridget Hargreave https://www.cayatherapy.co.uk/bridget-hargreave to talk about Cariad Llloyd's https://twitter.com/ladycariad wonderful book You are not alone which builds on her superb podcast The Griefcast and is described by Phillipa Pearce on the cover as "the friend you need when you are grieving"
This book is moving, practical, funny. So many things and explores so many feelings and ideas in such a brilliant and accessible way.
We had a brilliant conversation about Half the Sky a book which is sadly just as relevant and current now as it was in 2009 when it was first published. A review in the New York Times explains that “Half the Sky” tackles atrocities and indignities from sex trafficking to maternal mortality, from obstetric fistulas to acid attacks, and absorbing the fusillade of horrors can feel like an assault of its own. But the poignant portraits of survivors humanize the issues, divulging facts that moral outrage might otherwise eclipse.
It does this and so much more, illustrating with individual human stories big issues across the world and twins them with solutions and calls to activism. It's an important book and a deep one but also a book full of hope and opportunity.
Illiyin Morrison is a midwife by background and now well known on instagram as @mixing-up-motherhood and working as a birth debrief facilitator https://mixingupmotherhood.com/
We got together to discuss Bessel van der Kolk's book "The Body Keeps the Score" as well as Illy's fabulous new book The Birth Debrief.
We talk about the lack of teaching about trauma informed care in medical and midwifery training, about the subjective nature of what trauma might be, why The Body Keeps the Score is a book for everyone and much more
How many times have we consoled ourselves with the truism "this too shall pass"? In the world of change which we all currently inhabit there's so much uncertainty and I was hugely reassured to read Julia Samuel's gorgeous book and realise that the experiences of my patients, my friends and I are not actually all that weird after all.
I absolutely loved talking to Kate Wharton about her take on Julia's wisdom as well as discussing the similarities between our jobs (she's a vicar, I'm a GP) and the importance of community, congregation and connection.
Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris.
His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?
This is a book like no other, funny, moving, warm, fristrarting. The full spectrum of humanity. And a protagonist who is 74 and loving sex, lots of sex, just not with his wife.
I loved it. And thoroughtly enjoyed exploring themes in it with Pim Dhahan
Tuesday 28th March 2023 marks the third anniversary of poet, writer, broadcaster and all round national treasure Michael Rosen's admission to hospital with Covid-19. It felt only right therefore to release this episode today.
I'm talking to GP Kirsty Shires about Michael Rosen's wonderful Many Different Kinds of Love which documents his experiences of that time. It is such a moving and engaging book and one I'm sure I'll come back to repeatedly for teaching, for reflection and for enjoyment.
It's a celebration of love in some familiar different forms: Eros – Romantic love, Philia – Affectionate love. Storge – Familiar love, Pragma – Enduring love, Agape – Universal love. At the heart of the book is Michael Rosen's story told in his own voice and in the recollections of so many others from so many walks of healthcare who looked after him during that terrifying time.
Kirsty and I do talk about illness, about uncertainty and fear and of course Covid-19 itself, we hope we are celebrating the wonderful diversity of those NHS teams who worked together to care for (and love in the sense of agape and pragma) so many patients and we remember those who didn't make it too.
This episode is dedicated to the memory of those healthcare professionals who didn't make it through the pandemic. The WHO estimate there are 180 000 of you, we want to say thank you, and we remember you.
Imagine being a household name, a sporting hero and a member of England's world cup winning rugby team from 2003. Imagine having no recollection at all of the tournament of all tournaments in your sparkling career. Imagine being unable to remember the names of your children or the name of your dog. Imagine realising this was preventable and that the game you loved, to which you gave your career has harmed you irreparably. Welcome to the world of Steve Thompson.
I'm joined today by Gary Turner to discuss Unforgettable Steve Thompson's powerful and heartbreaking memoir of rugby and dementia.
I admit that when neonatologist Helen Chitty https://twitter.com/helenchitty4 got in touch to recommend The Well Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart Smith and to ask if she could join me on Bedside Reading I approached the book with some initial scepticism. Isn't gardening just outdoor housework? It turns out my initial apathy was matched by the author's when she had begun her journey into gardens, plants, nature and the power of growing to heal.
This is a stunningly good book, made all the better for me by the fact that my expectations were surpassed a hundredfold. I imagine if listeners like plants to begin with, this book would immediately leap out as a must read.
This week contains International Women's Day on March 8th and when I started talking to Benjamin Black about hsi stunning book about his time working for Medecins sans frontiers (MSF) in Sierra Leone it was clear this was going to be the right conversation to mark today.
I was blown away by Benjamin's writing, the insight into a medical world I'd never encountered and by his kindness, compassion and warmth which comes across just as much in his writing as it did when I spoke to him.
Today I am delighted to be talking to Heidi Edmondson, consultant in emergency medicine from London. We are talking about her second book, her memoir Bellyfull.
This is the story of Heidi's own journey through a very serious and rare illness and her strategies for denial, for adaptation, and for keeping on, keeping on, really beyond the point at which most of us would perhaps have succumbed to the overwhelming fatigue and general malaise that she was suffering from.
She explores this in relation to the way that the and NHS and emergency medicine in particular keeps on keeping on working in a broken and failing system, but somehow has that ability to just get up and get on with things.
Bellyfull is an absolutely brilliant book. There is so much warmth, humanity, kindness and optimism within there. It's a really, really good read. And I have loved talking to Heidi about it today.
Rebecca Wait's fourth novel I'm sorry you feel that way is out in paperback on March 2nd. Described by i-news as "one of the richest explorations of family dysfunction I’ve read", this is a fabulously funny and moving story of a family in all its shades of dysfunctionality. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think.
It's a brilliant read and there's just so much in here to reflect on and discuss. I loved the characters and the non chronological timeline which reveals just a little bit more of the story as we go.
Rebecca and I talk about the idea that every sibling grows up in a different family and we consider intergenerational trauma and whether holding onto the phrase that "difficulty makes people difficult" enables us to feel empathy for characters we might consider repugnant. I was especially engaged by Rebecca's portrayals of mental illness vs wellness in several characters and the discussions around "labels" and whether they are helpful or at times horribly stigmatising and reductionist. Her scenes of the "unravelling of Hanna" and way she writes about the fine liminal space between sanity and madness is some of the most effective fictionalisation of psychosis I have ever read.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to welcome the one and only Dr Kathryn Mannix to talk about her phenomenal book With the End in Mind which may well be the book I've most ever recommended to registrars, colleagues and students.
I tried hard not to end up going all fan girl on her but it was hard work to hold it all in, she really is one of my professional idols and it was a joy to record with her and listen to her wisdom.
Today's episode, the final one of series 3, is all about a topic which doesn't get spoken about enough: coercive control. We've specifically chosen to release it today, Valentine's Day, because we know that underneath the public face of all too many "happy" relationships there's a darker story at play.
Victoria Cilliers' chilling memoir I survived is the story of what many of us will remember from the press as "the parachute jump attempted murder". It is the story of a physio, a mum, a wife whose husband charmed everyone, tried to kill her and her children and did it in such a way that she, a professional, capable, intelligent woman, had no real awareness of what was happening to her.
SOME USEFUL RESOURCES IF SUPPORTING PATIENTS IN A SIMILAR CONTEXT