News

Thrilled to be appearing at Stroud Book Festival on Thurs 9 November alongside Penny Morland, whose excellent ‘A Fortunate Woman’ is a revisitation of the 1967 John Berger classic about a rural English GP, ‘A Fortunate Man’. We’ll be discussing what’s happening with general practice, and why it’s vital – for patients, doctors, and the sustainability of the health service – to restore general practice to its central place at the heart of the NHS.

Delighted to announce I’ll be appearing at the Cambridge Literary Festival on Sunday 19 November alongside Isabel Hardman, assistant editor of The Spectator and author of ‘Fighting for Life: Twelve Battles that Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future’. We’ll be discussing the minor issue of how to fix the NHS. Tickets are on sale now. The event starts at 6pm. We might be there a while.

Thrilled to announce that I’ll be appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Wednesday 24 August.

The event gets underway at 11.45 and I’ll be discussing my recent publication, ‘What Is a Doctor?’, and the future of the NHS with fellow authors Penny Morland and Dr Annabel Sowemimo. Sarah Brown will be chairing and keeping us all generally on point.

You can buy tickets here.

Delighted to announce that my new narrative non-fiction title, What Is a Doctor?, is now available in hardback, eBook and Audiobook from all good book retailers (and quite possibly some disreputable ones too). Through engaging and frequently moving patient stories, the book explores the movements in medicine, political interference, and cultural changes that have transformed the role of doctor over the past three decades – often for the worse. Published by Canongate on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, What Is a Doctor? also sets out what needs to be done to rescue this most cherished of British institutions from the crisis in which it is currently embroiled.

It’s here! Chicken Unga Fever, a collection of the best of my ‘Health Matters’ columns, which have appeared fortnightly for the past five years in the New Statesman. Just in time for Christmas, too. How lovely.

Thrilled to mark the official publication day for my sixth novel You – the blurb on the cover starts: ‘A man boards a train, hoping to see the daughter he’s heard nothing from for seven years.’

Many thanks to my fantastic publishers, the mighty Salt Publishing, who have turned my words into a very fine book indeed. Here’s the final cover of the first edition:

Delighted to publish the cover for my sixth novel, You, which will be published by the mighty Salt on 15th April 2018

I’m delighted to announce that my sixth novel, You, will be published by the mighty Salt in April 2018. More details, including cover art work and a taster of the story, will appear here later in the year.

Just when you think there will be no more reviews to come (actually, if I’m honest, months after I thought there’d be no more reviews to come), this little beauty appears in the New Statesman – ‘a fast-paced missing-person investigation that explores the complexities of sisterly strife on a vividly human scale.’

It’s never too late for a review to appear, it would seem … this nice mention appeared in the Catholic Herald, no less!