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This week Tara is joined by fellow GP Francesca to discuss Lisa Ridzén’s beautiful and heartbreaking novel When the Cranes Fly South.

Bo is an elderly man determined to remain in his own home, surrounded by his memories and, most importantly, his beloved dog Sixten. But as he becomes increasingly frail, his son and carers have different ideas about what is best for him.

Tara and Francesca talk about ageing, family relationships, continuity of care and the difficult balance between keeping somebody safe and preserving the things that make their life worth living. They also consider a question that sits at the heart of both the novel and good healthcare: what matters most to the person themselves? 

There’s also discussion of dogs, difficult sons, wonderful carers, the joys and perils of audiobooks, and why this relatively short novel resulted in quite so many tears.

A gentle, moving book that stays with you long after you’ve finished it.

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I think Michelle Hills' book The Wrong Order of Things is a contender for my non-fiction read of the year in 2026. It is so readable. It is so engaging. It is funny. It is moving. It is kind. Michelle is an absolute inspiration. I have absolutely loved my conversation with her today and I can't tell you how much I loved The Wrong Order of Things. It is, ostensibly, a book about children's palliative care. But it is that. and so much more. It's about living well. It's about humour. It's about connection and love and life. It really is one of the most brilliantly life affirming and beautiful books that I think everybody should be reading and I have absolutely loved talking to Michelle.

Follow Michelle on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/michellehills_dr/

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Caroline Litman's memoir, Her Name is Alice, was one of my top reads of 2025. And so it feels like a real honour today to welcome Caroline herself to Bedside Reading to talk about her absolutely brilliant book.

This is a memoir. It is about Caroline's life. She's a former doctor, turned Pilates teacher, turned writer and activist. And it is a book about her family.

It's a book about her daughter, Alice, who died by suicide at the age of 20. It's a book about grief. And it's a book about identity and most particularly the fact that Alice was trans and the difficulties that Alice had in articulating this and then in receiving anything like appropriate care.
There are so many lessons that we can learn from this book, and I feel really privileged that Caroline has chosen to come and join me today talk about it.

It's a book I will never forget. it is absolutely brilliant, and I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend it.

The systematic review Caroline recommends is:
Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. The “Utah Review” of Hormonal Treatments for Gender-Dysphoric Minors: A Methodological Appraisal. April 2, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19388024

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Welcome to Season 13 of Bedside Reading.

In this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Helen Haynes, to discuss her novel A Bridge Across Minds: Mental Illness, Grief and the Fragile Brain.

Helen is an old age psychiatrist and, as the saying goes, writers are often encouraged to write about what they know. Set on an older adults' psychiatric ward, this is not a textbook or a clinical guide. Instead, it is a beautifully written work of reflective fiction that explores mental illness, grief, relationships and the complexities of being human. It is a thoughtful and compassionate novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

This conversation feels particularly timely. On 17 September, we mark the Memorial Day for Healthcare Professionals Who Have Died by Suicide. Helen felt strongly that we should acknowledge this day and the important conversations it prompts.

Healthcare professionals face an increased risk of suicide, and many colleagues may be struggling in silence. In this episode, we reflect on the importance of recognising distress, supporting one another, and ensuring that help is available when it is needed.

Although we touch on themes of mental illness, grief and suicide, this is ultimately a conversation about people, their lives, and the importance of compassion, connection and support. We hope listeners will find it thoughtful and hopeful rather than depressing.

As we approach 17 September, we encourage everyone to take a moment to remember colleagues who have died by suicide and to familiarise themselves with the support services available for healthcare professionals.

Resources and Support

Links to resources, support services and information about the Memorial Day for Healthcare Professionals Who Have Died by Suicide can be found below.

https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/national-suicide-memorial-day

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As we reach the end of Season 12, I'm delighted to close with a truly special conversation.

In this episode, I speak with author, illustrator, educator, and autism advocate Eliza Fricker about her latest book, Could Try Harder. Written in a graphic novel format, the book draws on Eliza's own experiences growing up as an autistic girl and young woman who remained undiagnosed until her mid 40s.

Many listeners may already know Eliza through her writing and illustrations, or from her widely recognised social media presence under the name "Missing the Mark". Through her work, she has helped countless people better understand autism, neurodivergence, and the realities of navigating a world that often misunderstands autistic experiences.

Could Try Harder is an insightful, accessible, and deeply relatable read. Combining humour, honesty, and striking illustrations, Eliza shares her journey from childhood through to adulthood, offering a powerful perspective on identity, belonging, and late diagnosis.

Preparing for this conversation was a joy, not least because Eliza has long been one of my social media heroes. Thankfully, despite the saying that you should never meet your heroes, this meeting exceeded all expectations.

It feels like the perfect way to bring another great season to a close.

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I'm delighted to welcome Ian Seymour to Bedside Reading to discuss the first two novels in Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series: Tales of the City and More Tales of the City.

These are books I have returned to repeatedly throughout my adult life, and each time I revisit them, I discover something new to love. Rich in warmth, humour, compassion, and humanity, Maupin's novels continue to resonate decades after their original publication.

One of the great pleasures of this conversation was discovering just how much Ian also loves these books. Together, we explore what makes the series so enduring and why the residents of 28 Barbary Lane continue to feel so relevant today.

As well as celebrating these brilliant novels, we reflect on what they can teach us about community, belonging, identity, and acceptance. We discuss their significance not only as readers and lovers of literature, but also as doctors, considering how the stories might shape our understanding of the people and communities we serve.

Whether you're revisiting these books or discovering them for the first time, this conversation is a celebration of a series that has touched generations of readers and continues to offer insight, comfort, and joy.

Pride in Practice

We discuss the Pride in Practice programme during the episode. Pride in Practice is an LGBTQ+ inclusion programme designed to support primary care services in improving the experiences of LGBTQ+ patients.

Find out more here: https://lgbt.foundation/help/pride-in-practice/

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I do love an unputdownable page-turner, especially when it's dystopian feminist fiction, and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami delivers on every front.

In this episode of Bedside Reading, I'm delighted to welcome Victoria Sweetmore to the podcast to discuss this compelling and thought-provoking novel. What begins as a gripping speculative thriller quickly opens up into a rich exploration of power, autonomy, surveillance, identity, discrimination, and the ways in which systems can shape and constrain our lives.

The Dream Hotel is one of those rare books that manages to be both intensely readable and deeply unsettling. As the story unfolds, it raises questions that linger long after the final page, inviting readers to reflect on the balance between safety and freedom, the use of data and technology, and what it means to be judged for who we are or who we might become.

Victoria and I explore the novel's many layers, discussing not only what makes it such an accomplished work of fiction, but also the wider themes and conversations it inspires.

Whether you're a fan of dystopian fiction, feminist literature, or simply love a novel that gives you plenty to think about, this is a book well worth discovering.

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A really warm welcome back today to somebody who I always really enjoy talking to. I'm delighted to have Ben Tyler here today to talk about Hungry by Katriona O'Sullivan, which is Katriona O'Sullivan's second memoir which addresses topics around body shaming, hunger for food, for love, for achievement.

Ben has a really fascinating career, including a specialist interest in obesity medicine. So we're using this book as a jumping off point today to think about obesity, stigma, shame, and so much more.  I absolutely loved the book Hungry, but I've loved it even more after talking to Ben, and I hope you'll enjoy our conversation too.

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A warm welcome today to Dr. Alan Saxon, a retired general surgeon from Chicago and the USA and author of Training in Charity, which is an absolutely brilliant medical novel in the genre of something like the pit or ER casualty. It has appeal to people like me who are medical educators and fascinated by the way that medical students in the US were taught in the 1970s compared with how we teach in the UK now but  is also for anyone who loves stories and the sense of humanity and character development. It's a really lovely novel, and I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed talking to Alan about it today.

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A warm welcome today to Pete Aird, who is here to talk about Henry Normal and Angela Pell's wonderful memoir, A Normal Family: Everyday Adventures with Our Autistic Son.

This is a book which absolutely blew me away. I couldn't put it down.  I have adored Henry Normal's poetry for quite some time, and it was a really amazing window into the lives of two people, very successful TV people, and and Henry also as a poet, recognising that their son was going to be different to how they had imagined that he was going to be. They explore the challenges of bringing up a young person who is autistic and has a learning disability and the changes that that has required in them, the feelings that they have had and a really brutally honest portrayal of what it is to love and cherish and parent somebody who doesn't always give anything very much back to you and who you love so very much, want to protect, but don't have all of the tools to parent because the books are all based on a "normal" child.

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A really warm welcome today to Eva Hibbs, who is here to talk about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is an absolutely hilarious and very, very different novel i'm following a nine-year-old boy called Oscar in New York City following the death of his father. It's a really interesting,  thought-provoking novel with themes of undiagnosied neurodiversity and intergenerational trauma. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it's been great to talk about it with Eva today.

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It's a real honour today to welcome Stephen Unwin to Bedside Reading. Stephen is a theatre director by trade. He's also a brilliant writer. We're here today to talk about his phenomenal book, Beautiful Lives, How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong, which is an incredibly accessible, brilliant page-turner of a book, which runs through some of the history of how society have seen, judged, and categorised people.


It's about othering. It's about ableism. It's a real call to action for all of us to think about the way that we do things and the way that we see people And the fact that everybody must be human first and not labelled, categorised and pushed into a corner somewhere.


It is an utterly, utterly brilliant book. And I have absolutely loved talking to Stephen about it today.

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There might be a little bit of squealy fangirling from me today... I'm delighted to welcome Lee David to the podcast. Lee is a GP by background. She's also a CBT therapist and I remember her from when I was a GP registrar, when she introduced the concept of 15-minute CBT and ran lots of amazing workshops around this.

Lee also hosts an amazing podcast of her own but we're here today to talk about a book called Defy by Sunita Sah which is about why we just go along with things why sometimes, even when all of our body is crying out to us, "no, no, no, this is a terrible mistake" we agree to things. we think about how we can start to recognise that tension and to make different choices keeping our actions aligned with our values.

Lee is an absolutely wonderful speaker and she's somebody who really makes me think and often when I listen to her podcast and and it's been a real delight to host her online today and talk about this brilliant book.

Follow her podcast "The Choice Space" here: https://thechoicespace.co.uk/podcast/

We mentioned NHS Practitioner Health find them here https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/

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I've got a fabulous guest today, Neonatologist and poet Beth Osmond, talking about her gorgeous collection, Hatchery. This is an utterly, utterly gorgeous collection of beautiful poems, mainly inspired by Beth's career as a Neonatologist.

It is thought provoking, it is funny.,it is gentle, it is deep. There are so many things I could say about it. It is utterly, utterly lovely. Please, please buy yourself a copy. You can buy this direct from the publishers or you could obviously and nip down to your local bookshop and buy it that way instead if you would prefer.

It has been such a joy to talk to Beth and to hear a couple of the poems. It was very difficult for us to choose which two she should share. And there are so many lovely ones, but I'm hoping we will leave you wanting more, loving these poems and wanting to buy your own copy.

Buy your copy now: https://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/2026/05/launching-hatchery.html

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A very warm welcome today to Emma Vardy to talk about Pearl Buck's The Child Who Never Grew, a memoir. I'm releasing it this week because this week on 28th of June, it is International PKU Day. As you will find there is a lot to think about in terms of phenylketonuria and also the fact that eventually, after the end of this book, and and and when science had advanced, Pearl S. Buck's daughter, Carol, who she writes very movingly and beautifully about in this book, was recognized to have PKU. In a time when nobody really knew about it, nobody knew about low protein diets, there weren't the drugs, and the outcomes for children with PKU was incredibly, incredibly different to how it is at the moment.

Many of us have heard of PKU. We think of it as an autosomal recessive condition. We know that it's tested for in the newborn blood spot test. We know that it's something to do with protein. And every so often you pick up a can of a fizzy drink and it says "a source of phenylalanine" and we think, "oh, what's all that all about?" I hope that not only might I persuade you to read The Child That Never Grew and and to think about Pearl's experiences, and but also hoping my conversation with Emma will give you some really good going accidental CPD on the subject of PKU.

https://www.espku.org/2026/05/04/international-pku-day-2026-breaking-the-silence-on-mental-health-in-pku/

https://nspku.org/

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Natalie Adler's debut novel, Waiting on a Friend, is a joy. It is a story about a young woman, Renata, living in New York's East Village in the early 80s during the AIDS crisis.

There are stories of people.  There is injustice. There are ghosts. I don't normally like ghosts but I love the ghost angle of this book. If you're looking for a novel, which is a cross between The Great Believers, Rent, and It's a Sin, this is the book for you. It is brilliantly funny. It is moving. There's so much to think about. And it's been an absolute joy to talk to Natalie herself about it today for one of my Pride Month special episodes.

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It's a real pleasure today to welcome back Sarah Marwick, GP and Portfolio Career Doctor, to talk about Malcolm Gladwell's The Revenge of the Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell is such a brilliant and entertaining writer, and it is such a great book. There are so many stories. focusing on epidemics and social contagions. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about the book with Sarah and thinking about those themes which are really relevant to us as clinicians working in the health service.

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I've got a special episode today as part of June 2026, Pride Month. A warm welcome to Isaac Grivalja We're talking about his debut novel, Six and a Half Days in the City, which is a very quick and compelling read, which follows a young Latino bisexual EMT as he gets on a plane from his home in California to New York for a week of leave.

He's going to spend it with two of his oldest friends. And we have a real sense of his unmasking and freedom. And then, unfortunately, the unravelling that ends up coming with that and really thinking about his need to express himself and get away from the pressures of his work and life and the expectations of him at home.

It's a really interesting book. And I've really enjoyed talking to Isaac about how he wrote it. How much of himself is in Cameron? and the reasons for making sure that we are all seen in fiction because you can't be what you can't see.

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When I first really started thinking about medical humanities, torytelling and "accidental CPD", about 14 years ago, I set up the Chesterfield Medical Humanities Book Club, which is still running. The very first book that we talked about was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, which I had read before when it first came out and which I went back to and loved all over again.

So when I started bedside reading, I really thought that someone very early on would say, we must talk about Cutting for Stone. And no one did. I didn't push anybody because I knew it had to be the right time. Obviously it's always the guest's choice of what people talk about when they come on this podcast and it was a great delight to get a message from Alice Deasy a few months ago to say, that she had read Cutting for Stone, that she couldn't stop thinking about it, that she couldn't stop talking about it, that she couldn't stop recommending it to people, and that maybe she could come and talk about it on the podcast. I have had a brilliant time rediscovering this novel and talking to Alice.

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Creativity and Wellbeing Week runs from 18th - 24th May 2026. So this week I am bringing you an episode which is all about creativity in health, basing our conversation on the phenomenal book, Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt. If you haven't come across this book, it is absolutely brilliant.  Daisy has managed to distill into a few hundred pages a giant but incredibly accessible meta-analysis of all of the evidence around creative health andthe arts for health, thinking not only about wellbeing, but also about mental and physical health and the tangible benefits which we and our patients can gain from involvement in the arts and creativity.

Who better to talk about this book with than the very wonderful Nicola Davis, who has been on the podcast before and who some of you may know from her work with the organisation Creative Clinic?

Find the organisation Creative Clinic here: https://www.creativeclinic.org/ and their facebook feed https://www.facebook.com/crxeate and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_creativeclinic/

We mentioned the NCCH GP Special Interest Group, find them here: https://ncch.org.uk/gp-sig-for-creative-health

Daisy Fancourt's profile and contact information https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/44526-daisy-fancourt

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Kim Scott's Radical Candor had been on my to-read pile for years. I have no idea what it was that was stopping me picking it up. So I was delighted to be given the nudge by the very wise Michael Killshaw to pick it up.  I was not disappointed. it is such an accessible and brilliant book, relevant to anybody who works with people in a team, but particularly if you lead a team, particularly if you are a trainer or an educator of some sort, there is so much practical wisdom and a framework which really, truly has changed my life.

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A warm welcome back today to Greater Manchester GP, Zalan Alam. Today we are talking about Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple, which is an incredibly readable and very accessible, though enormous book about the five partitions of British India.


It is something that  really captivated me. There are so many brilliant human interest stories and it's really made me understand some parts of history much, much better than I ever did before. It's undoubtedly given me  a lot of food for thought. So it's a really, really good nonfiction book, which I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend and from which there is undoubtedly some accidental CPD.

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A really warm welcome to neurodevelopmental forensic psychiatrist Claudia Camden-Smith today, where we're talking about Patric Gagne's memoir, Sociopath.


This is such an interesting book, which really gripped me, made me think an awful lot, challenged a lot of my thinking, and it's something I've thought a lot about since I finished it. So it has been a real joy  to be talking to Claudia today about the book and about some of her own professional reflections around psychopathy. Particularly how prevalent psychopaths.  we talk about not reconising female psychopaths of whom the author Patric Gagne obviously is one.It's been a really really interesting conversation and it's an absolutely great book for accidental CPD.

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I'm really, really delighted today to be talking to Selina Flinders about an absolutely wonderful book, These Heavy Black Bones, by Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell.

This is a memoir written someone that some of you may have come across as a very high-level swimmer who swam originally for Kenya and then started to swim for Great Britain and crashed out of professional swimming just before the London 2012 Olympics.

This is a memoir. It has themes of growing up, of being different. There's racism. There are adverse childhood experiences. There is boarding school syndrome. There is safeguarding. There is "safeguarding in affluence". There is abuse masquerading in plain sight as concern and sports coaching. Oh my goodness, there was so much to talk about and I have absolutely loved talking to Selina today about it.

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Welcome to season 12 of the podcast!!! What a season I've got lined up for you this time round. We are starting today with an astonishing book written by an astonishing woman and it is such a treat today to be talking to Maria Milland. Danish obstetrician gynaecologist who has been deployed many times on humanitarian missions in the world. Her book Born at the Gates of Hell is a memoir of her experiences in the Al-Hol camp in Syria.

This is a truly, truly unputdownable memoir. I have gained so much from having read it and it has been a astonishing privilege to meet the incredible human that is Maria.

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I'm taking a little break from recording podcasts over Easter, and I'm really excited that I'm actually going away for a few days.  I've got a lot on my to-read pile, which I'm going to be taking with me. Some electronically to avoid filling up my suitcase too full, and some fabulous hard copies of some novels that I am absolutely desperate to read. 

So what's coming up in season 12? There's an eclectic selection so far.  I've had some amazing emails from publishers and agents about books which are coming out over the next few months. And I am looking forward to reading a book called Six and a Half Days in the City by Isaac Grijalva. This looks to be a really exciting novel written by somebody who is a paramedic in the the USA based in the world of emergency care and I really love the idea and of thinking about a bisexual burnt out EMT called Cameron preparing for a much needed New York City trip, staying with his two best friends whilst exploring the city. His vacation is shadowed by unresolved trauma...  N

 I was also approached by a fabulous publicist and who often puts me in touch with some really, really cool authors. A big thank you to Ana for recommending to me a novel which comes out in May, which is called Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler. This is 1980s historical fiction looking at the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York and particularly thinking about the role that lesbians played in the crisis and that sort of unsung role of friends and carers. The final new book and author that I'm really, really excited about and is a work of nonfiction, which is called Born at the Gates of Hell by obstetrician Maria Milland, who spent nine months working in the Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria. Born at the Gates of Hell, is her book detailing that experience. It's just been published. and And I am really, really looking forward to reading it and talking to Maria.

Of course, I've got lots of non-author guests coming on.  I'm really delighted to be welcoming back some old friends and as well as some new people. So I really love Malcolm Gladwell and I was really excited when Sarah Marwick got in touch and asked me if I'd like to talk about The Revenge of the Tipping Point. So that's definitely coming up.


There are a couple of fabulous novels that people want to talk about.  Most particularly, I'm really looking forward to talking to Alice Deasy about Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vergese which I think must be one of the novels that's really stayed with me and one of the ones that I just assumed when I started the podcast that someone would want to come on and talk about. . I know i have talked about his amazing second novel, Covenant of Water, but it's really exciting to be able to be talking about Cutting for Stone with Alice.

We've got some nonfiction and the really fascinating book Sociopath by Patrick Gagne, which I very much enjoyed reading. And I'm really excited and to have psychiatrist Claudia Camden-Smith coming on to talk about that.

I'm also welcoming a couple of people who I feel that know through some online education work, much less through podcasting, and who are going to come on and talk about some books which I think sound fabulous. So I'm really looking forward to talking to Lee David about a book called Defy, which I think is really going to be something that is going to have a lot of themes in it and that are really going to work for us. And Lee has got her own podcast, which is called The Choice Space, which I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring. And so I'm really excited to get her to guest with me. I'm also really looking forward to talking to Michael Killshaw about Radical Candor. I know that Kim Scott'd book has really changed a lot of people's lives, particularly those working in education or in leadership roles where they are m

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A warm welcome today to Ellen Basuk and Daniel Schoonover, the authors of Between Two Worlds, a wonderful mother-son memoir of Daniel's mental health difficulties and diagnosis at the age of 19, schizophrenia, and his mum, Ellen, a psychiatrist's approach to enabling Daniel to live a good life and get the support that he needed. It's a book which really made me think a lot about recovery-oriented care, about children who are seen to be different. about the confines of the school system and recognising that Ellen, a psychiatrist, fought and battled and did things her own way and eventually got elements of care that were going to work for her son. It really made me think about all of the other children growing up with challenges who are not well served by the terribly underfunded and rigid systems that we are currently expecting of people.

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I'm delighted to welcome Shannon Ivey to Bedside Reading today. We are talking about her wonderful memoir, Welcome to the Shit Show, her story of being diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer 10 years ago at the age of 42. It is brilliant to know that Shannon is still with us, still making people laugh, still full of energy and vitality.

I absolutely loved her book. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me think. I think most important is Shannon's message that rates of bowel cancer in young and middle-aged women are rising really, really fast.  The demographic that we expect to have bowel cancer is not the demographic that does have bowel cancer. Sadly, in the States, far too many women are dying from bowel cancer and are presenting very, very late.

It's been a real pleasure to meet Shannon and talk to her about her book and about some of the work that she is doing to try and change those statistics.

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Sunday 8th of March was International Women's Day and so today, Tuesday  10th is our special International Women's Day themed episode where I am talking to Charley Baker about the horrifying, eye-opening and thought-provoking book that is The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates.


This is a book which has really changed me. It has opened my eyes to so many aspects of technology which worry me. It has made me think about systemic inequality and gender inequity,  society, the world of AI and technology in a way that I had never really considered before. It is an absolutely superb read and I have so enjoyed talking to Charley about it and unpicking some of my feelings about the topic.

Find Charley on X:  https://x.com/CharleyBaker1

and on instagram https://www.instagram.com/charleybakerthebookpusher/

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I think that there is sometimes a bit of snobbery around genres of books. The self-help market is huge. It's there for a reason but I think sometimes those of us who really enjoy self-help feel that perhaps we should be going to some kind of self-help books anonymous club where we can talk about our love of the genre unimpeded by the judgment of others!

Last year, Anna Baverstock reminded me that actually self-help books are "leadership and development" books, and that helped me to see them in a different light and be slightly less embarrassed about how much I enjoy them.

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is, I think, one of the best self-help or leadership and development books that I have ever read. I can really, truly put my hand on my heart and say that it has changed me and very definitely for the better. So it's been a real joy to discover that my guest today, Dr Emma Cunliffe, feels similarly changed by Mel.

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I'm not entirely sure whether Anita and I have really even scratched the surface of a discussion about Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We've both acknowledged that Chimamanda is one of our absolutely favourite novelists and her new novel, Dream Count, does not disappoint on any front. There are themes galore in this book. There are stories of four rather different women whose lives coincide.

There are lots of reflections on very common, almost mundane life and health themed issues like constipation and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.  We have elements around class and status. We have lots of thoughts around culture clash. Fundamentally, this is a novel about friendship and about how the world changed during the pandemic. Did we become closer because of video calls, or are we more distanced because of them?

It is such a wonderful novel. i have utterly loved talking to Anita today, and I really think if you haven't read this already, it should be on your to-be-read pile.

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Poor by Katrina O'Sullivan is a book which has really, really stayed with me. I listened to it as an audiobook and I could not stop listening.  I think it helps that Katrina has a fabulous voice, but actually the voice, both physically and in what she is talking about, is so powerful and so compelling.

It was a real joy to talk to Lydia Fairhurst about this brilliant book, which I think has taught me much more about child safeguarding than any safeguarding training I've ever been on. It's taught me much more about trauma-informed care than any course I've ever been on. And most importantly, it has really made me think about the voices of people who we often choose not to listen to, because every voice matters. Every child's voice matters. Every adult's voice matters. Sometimes people will say things which we disagree with. I feel strongly that is the point at which we have to challenge ourselves to think about why we are disagreeing with them whether our thoughts are based in prejudice and in privilege and I am forever grateful for having discovered Katrina O'Sullivan via her book and more recently from following her on Instagram because almost weekly she challenges my thinking and I hope is making me a much better doctor.

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I love it when a guest approaches me and says, "please, can I talk about this book?" especially when it's a book that I've never, ever come across before. And today is one of those days. We are talking about The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas, which is an absolutely beautiful, very short Norwegian novel published in the 1950s, which I had never come across before.

My life is so much better for having come across it. And I think my care of patients and families has been dramatically improved by having read it. So a huge thank you to Ruth Maxey for both suggesting the novel and joining me today to talk about it.

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I'm really pleased today to welcome Dr Richard Duggins to Bedside Reading to talk about his book, Burnout Free Working.

We know that burnout is incredibly common in all professionals, particularly in health professionals. We also know that it is not always something we are talking enough about. Frustratingly, it is both preventable and incredibly, incredibly treatable. If only we know what's happening, if only we talk about it more, and if only we are supported to work in a healthier and better way.

I have really enjoyed reading this incredibly accessible book and I've absolutely loved talking to Richard today about some of the themes in it and I hope you will enjoy the conversation and if you haven't already discovered the book, we'll go out and get yourself a copy.

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I always enjoy talking to my guests about books. Sometimes I don't enjoy the book they've chosen. Often I am surprised by how much I have enjoyed something that I wasn't expecting to enjoy.  Today, though, is different to all of that. It's a real joy to welcome Ripon Ahmed back to the podcast to talk about what must be one of my all-time favourite novels featuring a doctor: The Citadel by A.J. Cronin. It is undoubtedly the book that made me know that I needed to be a GP. And I will be forever grateful for having discovered it when I was a final year medical student.  I've read it several times over the years and so much of it has stayed with me. So much of it seems really topical. And it has been such a pleasure to talk about it today with Ripon and explore the themes in the book, the storyline and how much of it is so very, very relevant to all of us working in health today.

We mentioned the Deep End movement https://www.yorkshiredeependgp.org/

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i've had the best fun setting up and recording today's podcast with Caryn Price and Georgina Benger. We are talking about a book that they have written together called Olive's Day. We also mentioned Willow's Day, which is the second in a series which we hope will be going to be. quite a big series of fabulous books written ostensibly for children but from which grown-ups can learn an awful lot.

Today's episode is all about adjustments, reasonable adjustments, pathological demand avoidance (or persistent drive for autonomy )and how we can support children and young people who have this neurotype in our encounters with them in healthcare care and beyond.


we mention the PDA society who have some great resources and support
https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/

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I'm delighted to welcome Louise Persaud to Bedside Reading today to talk about a beautiful and very thought-provoking novel. Pearl by Sian Hughes. T

"After she left, I wondered, had I been spirited it away or had she? Was I still in the real world or was this some land of bad copy? What if my mother was looking everywhere for me, calling my name?

What if I could fall backwards out of this poor faded replica of reality and land in the middle of a bed of spurge? Look up and see my mother sitting under the apple tree threading her needle to sew my name onto school clothes I would never have to wear."


This is a book told in the first person about the life of a girl whose mother has disappeared. And we think about loss and grief,  about mothering, about motherlessness. We talk about families, about imperfect heroes. There is so much to think about within this novel.

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I'm delighted to welcome Hannah Loret to Bedside Reading today to talk about Overspill by Charlotte Paradise. This is a really gripping, absolutely brilliant novel.

The blurb: Sara is 25. She's never used a tampon without having a panic attack. She starts dating Miles. Three months, they don't touch. Miles respects her boundaries, though he longs for them to melt away. Sara desires Miles, but she knows her body, or rather she knows it is an unknowable thing. Sara wants to be in love, to find a person who allows her to be herself, someone who's happy with everything she is and everything she isn't. Miles hopes he won't hurt her. But how do you navigate a relationship for which there is need? How do you love someone when your body is not your own, and how do you reclaim it? 

This is an absolutely brilliant novel. It has got a narrative around vaginismus and sexual pain,  vaginal pain at its heart but there's a lot more to it than that. And there are some fantastic characters, some really interesting evolutions of relationships.  I couldn't put it down and I think it's a book that I'm going to think about for a really long time.

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It's that strange time of year that we sometimes refer to as Twixtmas again.  I hope people have received lots of fantastic new books to start reading, have eaten a bit too much, drunk a bit too much and are starting to think about plans for 2026.  I've gathered together some friends of the podcast to have a think back over their year of reading in 2025 and to come up with a favourite book from 2025, as well as something that they are really looking forward to reading in 2026.

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A warm welcome today to emergency physician, Johnny Acheson, who is here to talk about his book, When Your Neurons Dance, which is a journey through Johnny's own diagnosis with Parkinson's disease at the age of 41. We explore some of the lessons that he has learned from lived experience of being a doctor, living and working with Parkinson's disease, thinking about the importance of exercise, community, support, education, It's a real eye opener as a book and one that I think we can all learn a huge amount from.

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The Names by Florence Knapp is undoubtedly one of my top fiction reads of 2025, if not my absolute top read of 2025. It is an astonishing first novel, which follows three different storylines, all based on what Cora names her baby boy. Will she call him Gordon? (the name chosen by her husband, also Gordon.) Will she call him Julian? Or will she call him Bear, the name suggested by his sister? This is an absolutely amazing sliding doors type of a novel with some extremely dark themes running through around domestic abuse.

It felt only appropriate to be thinking about the Doctors Association UK and Medical Women's Federation campaign about domestic abuse in healthcare care workers, how prevalent this is. And how much of a problem it can be. So slight trigger warning, we are going to be talking today about abuse, about domestic abuse, and about the effect on women and on families, as well as the huge difficulties that may arise when a perpetrator is in a position of power and privilege.

https://dauk.org/wave-of-activity-to-launch-nhs-domestic-abuse-awareness-day/

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Shred Sisters, the debut novel by Betsy Lerner, was a real highlight of my summer reading this year. It is fabulous novel about a family, particularly about two sisters, Amy and Ollie, and the effect that Ollie's mental illness has on her, on her sister, and on the wider family.


It's been a great joy today to be talking to the author, Betsy Lerner. This is Betsy's first novel, written in her 60s, suggesting that it's never too late to become a novelist. Betsy is also, unexpectedly, a TikTok star, talking about her own life experiences, her diaries, and giving some fabulous, compassionate, wise advice to younger people starting off in their lives and careers.

I absolutely adore Shred Sisters, and it's been a real pleasure to talk to Betsy about it.

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How Christmasy are you feeling? It's December now and I know for some people this is a really exciting time of year.

Today's podcast has been the best fun to record and is about a book which I absolutely adored. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about today's book is the fact that I didn't read it for the first time in December because it is a proper warm hug of a cheesy Christmas romantic comedy. That's not to say that it is without depth, but it really is just about the most perfect book to snuggle up in front of the fire with a hot chocolate and escape into and it was a huge treat to get to talk to Hayley Dunlop, the author, about it today.

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I'm delighted to welcome Professor Paul Crawford to the podcast today. We are talking about his novel, The Wonders of Dr Bent, described in the publisher's blurb as "a twisted tale of murder, revenge and abandonment."

It is sort of a crime thriller, but there's so much more to this novel. There are some beautiful characters. There are two main protagonists who skirt on the edges of health and and illness.  We see characters who are thriving professionally whilst battling with demons of their own. In the background, we have fabulous supporting cast and a real sense of what could be and what could be better if only our mental health services were not designed with the idea that people are either mad or bad or perhaps both or completely well.

Paul enables us to experience that area in between and the value of allowing people to survive and function within their own lives and be of value. It's a really interesting, gripping, thought-provoking novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Paul about it.

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A warm welcome back today to GP Kirsty Shires, who's here today to talk with me about Jacqueline Harpman's 1995 novel, I Who Have Never Known Men.

This is an absolutely astonishing book. It is dystopian fiction at its best, I think. It is human, it is connected, it is thought-provoking, it is bizarre. There's so much to think about packed into 200 very short pages. I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's definitely a book I'm going to go back to, and I've really enjoyed talking to Kirsty about it.

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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.

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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.

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To celebrate the end of season 10 and our 4th birthday, today's episode is a little bit different. I've chosen a small snippet of each of the most downloaded episodes from seasons 1-10.

I hope you'll enjoy a trip down memory lane!

Episodes featured:

S1 Jo Stewart and I discuss Instrumental by James Rhodes

S2 Ed Pooley joins me to discuss Counselling for Toads

S3 Emma Cunliffe and I explore Victoria Cilliers' chilling memoir of abuse I Survived

S4 The most downloaded episode of all time, Ellie Corso and I discuss This Winter by Alice Osman

S5 Kathleen Wenaden and I explore Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

S6 Kirsty Shires and I talk about the anthopological classic medical humanities text The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

S7 Rebecca Henleywillis and I talk about Fern Brady's excellent memoir  Strong Female Character

S8 It's the turn of the memoir of everyone's favourite vicar, The Rev Richard Coles, The Madness of Grief which I loved talking about with Lynsey Bennet

S9 Time for a poem and Beth Osmond guides us through "Ode to Dalya's Bald Spot" by Ahgel Nafis

S10 It's The Anxious Generation and Laura Spells and I talk about Jonathan Haidt's book, the smartphone-free-childhood movement and the great rewiring of childhood

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It is a huge pleasure today to welcome doctor and writer, Majid Parsa. We're talking about The Ayatollah's Gaze: a memoir of the forbidden and the fabulous, which is his first boook. What a book and what a memoir it is. I absolutely loved it. 

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I picked it up. It has a phenomenal pink cover. It is wise. It is insightful. It is moving. It is very, very funny in places and it was a real window into a world which I might not otherwise ever have known about. This is Majid's story. but it's also the story of a generation of young men in Tehran.

It has really, really made me think, and I loved talking to him about it

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It's a real treat today to welcome one of the authors of Ultra Women, Emma Wilkinson to the podcast. Ultra Women, written by Emma Wilkinson and Lily Canter, is a book which rather defies classification. It is a book about women doing extraordinary things in the fields of endurance sport, but it's very much not a "sports book".

We've got wonderful stories. We've got sociology. We've got history. We've got physiology. We've got a good dose of "invisible women" in there as well.

It's a really, really fascinating, thought-provoking book, which I absolutely loved reading. And it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to Emma today about the book and what we can take away from it.