A Call from the Girls in Blue ‘May we come in?’I usher them in.‘We understand that you have written a book entitled Scalpels Out?‘Yes. That is so.’‘We have had a complaint. A woman has reported that it has caused her deep psychological damage.’‘Well, there is nothing...
Publishing today A few years ago, a colleague’s daughter who had just completed a degree in Italian and Arabic, was given a four-month internship in a large London publishing house. She understood that it was a business and so of course sales and numbers of books sold...
From Anaesthetist to Author My first job – when fourteen – was house-painting in the summer holidays for two shillings and ten pence per hour. My friend was barrowing fire-bricks into furnaces for their annual re-lining and he was on three times that. Anaesthesia –...
The Future of the N.H.S.? The Parliamentary sub-committee on health expenditure gathered in a slightly fusty oak-panelled room. The statistician gave his presentation. With or without such high-tech stuff as cancer therapies genetically tailored to each patient, the...
Is there anything new under the sun ? Italy beckons. I have been working so hard. Sunshine, a sun-lounger beside the pool and a good book … ecstasy. Rucksack? Sun-glasses? In the airport bookshop, I scour the recent fiction. A tempting cover, but … it is all shagging...
