Bedside Reading: Recent Episodes

Bedside Reading Podcast

A medical humanities podcast for bibliophile health care professionals where we explore themes from fiction, memoir and other non traditional non-textbooks which help to make us better at what we do. Hosted by Dr Tara George, a GP and medical educator in each episode a different guest explores a book that has changed their practice. Follow us on Twitter @bedsidepodcast. If you'd like to recommend a book or to come on the podcast as a guest please email: bedsidereadingpodcast@gmail.com. Episodes hosted by Tara George, edited by Lewi Gee

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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 corse and I discuss This Winter by Alice Oseman

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

S6 Kirsty Shires and I talk about the anthopological classic medical humaities 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 Cantor, 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.

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Suzanne O'Sullivan's The Age of Diagnosis was hotly awaited and has received a lot of discussion on social media and in the national press. Ben Tyler and I had both really enjoyed her former books and looked forward to this book. Overdiagnosis is a bit of a hot topic lately, but as I hope we manage to explore, keeping curiosity and compassion at the forefront of what we do are much more important than making hard judgements.

We mention John Harris' brilliant substack on the book https://maybeimamazed.substack.com/p/why-new-book-the-age-of-diagnosis

and Elke Housmann's BJGP review of the book https://bjgp.org/content/75/754/228

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John Harris' excellent book Maybe I'm Amazed has been one of my non-fiction top reads this year. It was a huge pleasure to welcome James Booth to the podcast to discuss it, and share some of our experiences. We are both GPs, we are both parents of autistic young people and we both found John's book relatable, funny, warm, moving and necessary.

If you want to know more about the book, here's what the publisher's say:

"In this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the story of how music has opened up the world to his son, one song at a time. Obsessed with music since he was a child, John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became a source of precious connection and endless wonder for both of them.

Maybe I'm Amazed describes how the music of The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, Amy Winehouse and many more were soon woven into the fabric of James's life, becoming an essential part of who he is. It takes us through the struggles of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world, and uncovers a hidden history of neurodivergence and creativity that casts new light on why notes, chords and lyrics speak so powerfully to the human mind.

Anyone who has fallen in love with a band or heard their life reflected back to them by a song will recognise themselves in the story of this father and his son. And in considering the intense and transcendent way James absorbs and connects with music, it has lessons in listening and living for us all."

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A warm welcome today to Dr. Ahmed Handy, who is here to talk about his memoir, Quacks. We've recorded today my favourite bookshop, which is Scarthin Books in Cromford, near Matlock. If the sound is a little bit different to how you might expect the podcast to sound, I hope you'll bear with us. There were a few people in the background. There were loads of people looking at books, thinking about books, and drinking cups of tea and eating cake in this absolute gem of a place.

It felt like far too good an opportunity to miss to be talking about the book in the most wonderful independent bookstore I can think about, so please enjoy and bear with the sounds of teaspoons and teacups!

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Medication, Mental Illness and Murder. What Really Killed the Crespi Twins? sounds like the title of a true crime book or a thriller. I suppose you could call this a true crime. This is an incredibly good book, which has really, really challenged me. I'm delighted to be welcoming Ed Jones, the author to the podcast today.

It's quite a hard read in places. It's a story about father who was significantly unwell, who was struggling with side effects from medication and who took the lives of his two children and pays the price of consecutive life sentences in US s jail. Not in any way cheerful reading. But I think a really important book. And I've thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Ed today about how we perceive illness, about the role of pharmaceutical companies in marketing drugs in particular ways, about spin and propaganda and really the importance of listening to people, particularly when they perceive that they or somebody else might be at risk.

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It's a huge pleasure today to welcome Martin Brunet to Bedside Reading. We are talking about his fabulous book, Your Worry Makes Sense. You may have discovered Martin on Instagram where he's a bit of a mental health sensation. He is such a wonderful communicator and an incredible translator of knowledge. And this comes across absolutely brilliantly in this fantastic book, which has already been recommended to a huge number of my patients and my colleagues with very good effect.

Follow Martin in instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doc_martin_gp/

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Have you ever suffered from imposter syndrome? I think most healthcare professionals have done at some point during their lives. Today's book is one which seeks to address many of the factors that influence that. Though interestingly, the writer Tara Mohr doesn't ever use the phrase "imposter syndrome".

I'm here today with Sam Powell to talk about Playing Big by Tara Mohr. This is a really accessible leadership book, thinking about why women often "play small",
why they don't necessarily push themselves forward, why they let their inner critic sabotage the amazing ideas that they've got and things that they want to do.

It is book filled with lots and lots of practical wisdom, which I have thoroughly enjoyed talking about.

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Regular listeners may remember that I always say that I don't like fantasy and also how excited that I get when I am able to talk to an author. So I'm delighted today to welcome Joe Moore to Bedside Reading to talk about his young adult novel, which is called Blue Suns and Skyshine.

It's quite a difficult book to categorise. And I think we've decided that it's magic realism, though Joe's decided that he'd quite like to invent a completely new genre, which is called magical realism thriller and maybe it's that as well!!

This story is a quest. It's a coming of age story. A adolescent boy is left a series of letters by his grandfather, which lead him on a magical mystery tour around the British Isles, ostensibly to scatter his granddad's ashes in a place that is special to his granddad and unknown to young David. There is a wonderful cast of characters that we meet along the way. It's a really, really interesting intriguing entertaining novel which in spite of not being my usual sort of book to read I have thoroughly enjoyed and I've really enjoyed talking to Joe about it today

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It's a huge pleasure to welcome the brilliant Becky Platt to Bedside Reading this week. We're talking about Needle by Patrice Lawrence. Becky is an ACP in paediatric emergency medicine in London. She's also part of the exec for Don't Forget the Bubbles, an amazing open access medical education organisation. https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/

Becky's compassion, her willingness to see young people as themselves, to be thinking about things from other people's perspectives, and to be doing the right thing by young people, even when that is difficult.or not the easiest option, really shone through in our conversation today about Patrice Lawrence's brilliant short novel, Needle.

Becky is an incredible storyteller in her own right. Here's a link to her brilliant TED Talk, which is all about providing love and compassion in the emergency department.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psdgiqsacdc

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A very warm welcome today to retired paediatrician, Dr Harry Stone, who is here today to talk about his memoir, Trust Me, I'm Exhausted, How Not to Train a Doctor.

This is a really engaging medical memoir, one framed by an admission as a patient to the hospital that retired Dr Stone worked in. As he lies in a hospital bed, before he lies in a hospital bed, as he lies on a trolley, as he experiences some of the most challenging care that the NHS is able to offer in corridors, in overpopulated wards, understaffed situations, he reflects on his own journey as a doctor, his training as a medical student, his junior doctor years.

Harry reflects on the changes that he saw through a long career in the NHS and thinks about some of his experiences as a patient and as a doctor and how being a doctor who is also a patient can really frame our thinking, change it and challenge it It's a really accessible book which I enjoyed reading and it's been great to talk to Dr Stone today.

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I'm really delighted today to welcome Scott Weingart to Bedside Reading. Scott is an emergency critical care physician from New York and the host of the EMCrit blog and podcast https://emcrit.org/

We are today talking about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. This is such a brilliant accessible book which has really got me thinking a lot about what we need, how important bringing our own feelings into a conversation are, but the importance of owning those feelings, observing what is going on, being responsible only for ourselves, and recognising that when we choose to do something, rather than feel compelled to do it, everything is so much better. I have loved rediscovering this book, and it has been absolutely fantastic to talk about it, with Scott.

EMCrit is on Bluesky @emcrit.bsky.social,
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/emcrit and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emcrit

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A very warm welcome today to midwife and educator Suzanne Crozier. We are talking about a book called The Midwife by Tricia Cresswell, which is an absolutely brilliant historical fiction novel, which Suzanne and I both enjoyed enormously for some similar and some different reasons.

The Midwife is set in rural Northumberland and in Victorian London. And it's one of those brilliant books with dual narratives, with two wonderful protagonists. It keeps you guessing, and makes you think. There are so many themes in here around public health, gender, health, status, community, poverty. It's an absolutely cracking read and I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to Suzanne.

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I'm really pleased today to be welcoming Georgia Vine to Bedside Reading. Georgia is an OT and is the author of Occupational Therapy, Disability Activism and Me, Challenging Ableism in Healthcare, which is a bit of a mouthful of a title for a very slim and absolutely brilliant, brilliant book.

Georgia is an OT, she is an educator at the University of Huddersfield and she also is disabled. She has cerebral palsy and this book is based on her own experiences through the education system, higher education, occupational therapy training, and the enormous hurdles which she had to leap over in order to become registered with the health professionals regulatory body, and which absolutely astonished me because I thought that the health service might have moved on somewhat in its ableist attitudes.

Georgia's blog is here https://notsoterriblepalsy.com/

Georgia reassures me during the course of the podcast that perhaps things have got better. I really hope they have. and with activists like her flying the flag, perhaps the world of healthcare is going to become even better at supporting students and staff who have disabilities, but also have so much to offer and so much insight into the system.

Georgia is obviously incredibly talented. She is so, so wise and insightful drawing on her own experiences and experiences beyond what you might expect somebody in their 20s to have experienced, presumably as a result of her own disability.

I absolutely love the book. It's really challenged me as an educator. It's really challenged me as a doctor and in a good way and to really, really think about what people can do and to start adopting a much, much more strengths-based framework in everything that I do in supporting my learners. So I'm hugely grateful to Georgia for writing it, and it was a real pleasure to talk to her about it.

Find Georgia on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/notsoterriblepalsy

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I'm here today with Laura Spells to talk about a book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. And we are thinking about Gen Z in particular and the generation behind that, the younger children. We're thinking about smartphone use. We're thinking about the effect that phones and social media have on developing brains. The move that has happened in the world from play-based to a phone-based childhood and what we're losing in that and what we're gaining in terms of anxiety, anxiety, alterations in social social skills, children being less able to take physical risks, less able to resolve conflict.

I felt quite conflicted about reading the book because I thought that Jonathan Haidt was going to be very anti-technology and was going to be telling everybody to get rid of their phones. And actually the message is incredibly compelling, but much more nuanced than that. It is a really good read and I have absolutely loved exploring some of the themes with Laura.

Resources for parents:

Smartphone free childhood; https://smartphonefreechildhood.org; the campaign hub! Provides links to all the evidence to all the harms there are linked with phone use.
SFC parent pact; https://parentpact.smartphonefreechildhood.org/
The anxious Generation; https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/; Lots of further information from the book - all the graphs, resources and additional material.
Jonathan Haidt You tube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOf0v_ZYfU9_KlGn77h49; Tons of brilliant videos of him talking on here
Feel better, live more Dr Ranjan Chaterjee podcast episode talking to Jonathan Haidt; https://drchatterjee.com/how-smartphones-are-rewiring-our-brains-why-social-media-is-eradicating-childhood-the-truth-about-the-mental-health-epidemic-with-jonathan-haidt/
Let Grow Project; https://letgrow.org/; Ideas to help parents let go of their children with confidence
The healthy selfie; https://thehealthyselfie.co.uk/?srsltid=AfmBOoq9PZA1KQPogR59HR1zbJovmLmkgy_kgD4Bp1dbkTn7gXvLGMzt; fantastic book full of practical tips for helping your child develop a healthy relationship with their phone and themselves

Resources to point headteachers to:

Smartphone free schools; https://smartphonefreeschools.co.uk/; All the evidence behind the need to go fully smartphone free, including success stories from headteachers who have done this.
Sophie Windosr presenting a fantastic speech on the need for schools to reduce their invading Edtech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88
PAPAYA (Parents Against Phone Addiction in Young Adolescents); https://www.papayaparents.com/; amazing charity delivering parent and child workshops about phone addiction. If you look closely in Meet the Teamhttps://www.papayaparents.com/meettheteam you may see a familiar face

Resources for Health Professionals:

Health Professionals for safer screens;

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It is a great pleasure today to re-release an episode from back in season 7 to celebrate the paperback edition of to Jane Campbell’s novel “Interpretations of Love” which was published on 5th June

Jane joined me to talk about her first novel, Interpretations of Love. Regular listeners may know that I've talked about one of Jane's books before, which is a short story collection called Cat Brushing, which I absolutely loved. Jane was a group analyst and then became a writer in her late 70s, publishing her first book in her 80s and I think she's a real inspiration that it's never too late to start writing but that also to remember that as we interact with people and as we work with them we will collect stories and we will get a better understanding of what a narrative is and different people's perspectives and that probably actually makes people better writers. It was a real joy talking to Jane and I'm really hoping you're going to enjoy our conversation.

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Welcome to season 10 of Bedside Reading and what a series I've got lined up for you this time around! I am delighted to be launching today with two very special guests, Debbie Hicks and Gemma Jolly from The Reading Agency.

The Reading Agency is an absolutely wonderful charity and their Reading Well "Books on Prescription" scheme is absolutely fantastic. If you don't know about it already, there's plenty in the show notes to tell you about it and we will be talking about it during today's episode.

https://readingagency.org.uk/

We are here today to talk about three different and absolutely brilliant books that the Reading Agency recommend on their Reading Well scheme. Frankie's World by Aoife Dooley, Slow Puncture, Living Well with Dementia by Pete Berry and Deb Bunt, and Boy with a Topknot by Satnam Sanghera

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Nina Donovan's brilliant poem Nasty Woman moves me so much every time I hear it, or read it. It's such a joy to welcome Charley to the podcast here

Listen to Nina perform her poem here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvN0On85sNQ

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In this episode, I'm joined by GP Jo Maher as we delve into Jackie Kay’s evocative poem “Three Little Birds” We explore grief, memory, the power of music and the possibility of an earworm from beyond the grave

Whether you’re familiar with her work or discovering it for the first time, this episode offers a heartfelt look at one of Jackie Kay’s most moving poems.

we mentioned Jo's partner's poetry podcast which you can find here: https://www.chris-jones.org.uk/

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It's a real treat to welcome one of my all time medical humanities heroes to the podcast again this week. Sam Guglani is an oncologist, poet and novelist. He is the curator of the incredible Medicine Unboxed, hosting a festival which I've thoroughly enjoyed attending and this wonderful podcast https://soundcloud.com/medicineunboxed

Sam was generous enough to give up his time to talk about his wonderful novel Histories back in season 2 (listen here: https://bedsidereading.buzzsprout.com/1880290/episodes/11212760-histories) and it was so lovely to spend time talking with him again, this time about Preparation by Czeslaw Milosz.

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I'm not sure I can say I have a favourite poet but if I were forced to choose the incredible Hollie McNish would be up there as a hot favourite.

Lizz Lidbury and I are talking about one of our favourite of her poems today Arguing in the Headmaster's Office. As the mother of teenage girls this one spoke to me (and is one of the only literature sources my older teen and I can both agree on the brilliance of!!)

It's clearly best when ready by Hollie herself so here's a link https://www.tiktok.com/@holliemcnish/video/7246103333604248859

Enjoy, we did!!

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There is a wonderful recording of James Fenton reading this wonderful poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D3KcWVfQS8 it is well worth listening to.

Follow Tom on bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/tpoates.bsky.social

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Welcome to the third in a short special series of "Bedside Poetry" podcasts.

One poem, one guest, one conversation....

I'm delighted to welcome psychiatrist and writer Sabina Dosani to explore "Visit to the Vets" by Ilse Pedler

Listen here to Ilse Pedler reading her poem herself:
https://youtu.be/p3LTxg1SnP0?si=bMtri4HsTIAGMKcb

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Welcome to the first of a short special series of "Bedside Poetry" podcasts.

One poem, one guest, one conversation....

I'm delighted to welcome neonatologist and poet Beth Osmond to explore Angel Nafis' poem "Ode to Dalya's Bald Spot"

find the poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149508/ode-to-dalyas-bald-spot

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This is the last episode in season eight of the podcast. What a season we've had, finishing off with discussion of Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy. I'm delighted to welcome Laura Shtaingos to the podcast today. Laura wears a number of hats, mostly working within the perinatal mental health space. And it was really, really good to be talking to her about Claire Kilroy's extraordinary, raw novel. which I think brings up lots of themes very pertinent for anybody who is looking after young parents, parents of small children, and looking after children, recognising that children do not exist in a vacuum.

I would say if you are a new parent yourself and really struggling, this book might be a big challenge. It might be one where you really feel seen, heard and normalised or it might be quite traumatic and quite triggering. So I think it needs to come with a bit of a warning, but it was absolutely wonderful to welcome Laura today and really to think about this novel and what we can take away from it.

Laura volunteers with https://www.babyumbrella.org.uk/

Find Laura here: https://www.westkentcounsellor.co.uk/how-i-work

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I'm delighted to welcome Abi Lucking, GP and Medical Educator to Bedside Reading today. We are talking about Dirty Laundry by Richard Pink and Roxanne Emery. You may have come across Rich and Rox. They are the couple ADHD_love_ frequently to be found on Instagram and on Facebook and TikTok. It was really, really good to find that they had written a great book, which is very short, very accessible, very readable, and one of the most compassionate and wise books I've read in the last few months. I really, really enjoyed it, and I've really enjoyed exploring it with Abi: thinking about ADHD, being the partner of somebody with ADHD, supporting colleagues or trainees who are or might have ADHD. It's a really, really good book and I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed thinking about it.

Abi recommended the book ADHD effect on marriage by Melissa Orlov
https://adhdmarriage.com/content/adhd-effect-marriage-understand-and-rebuild-your-relationship-six-steps

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The Reverend Richard Cole's memoir of grieving for his husband David, The Madness of Grief, is I think one of the most brilliant and moving books on the topic I have ever read. When I started the podcast, I imagined that it wouldn't be long before somebody got in contact and wanted to talk about it. So it's been astonishing that we are almost at the end of season eight before a guest has asked to come and talk about it. And I'm glad I waited because I have loved talking to Lynsey Bennett today and about grief, about complex grief, about communication in and around grief. This is such an accessible, moving and funny book, one which I have recommended to a lot of patients as well as to colleagues and it was really good to have a conversation about it.

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It's a really warm welcome back today to Anna Baverstock, a paediatrician from Taunton in Somerset. We are talking today about A Beginner's Guide to Dying by Simon Boas. Don't let the word dying in the title put you off. This is an absolutely wonderful and incredibly uplifting short book. It was written by Simon Boas in the last few months of his life.

It is reflections on a life immensely well lived and his reflections on the way to be. How to live life to the full, especially when you know that it's going to be short. It's very moving, it's properly laugh out loud funny and it's taught me and Anna a great deal.

Follow Anna on social media here:

https://bsky.app/profile/annabav.bsky.social

https://www.instagram.com/annadoodleaday/

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Lucy Easthope's book, When the Dust Settles, is quite possibly one of the most astonishing things I have ever read. Having come back to it for today's podcast, I am struck again by the compassionate wisdom with which Lucy writes and how relevant the themes from disaster recovery are to all of us, particularly those of us working in healthcare. It was such a treat to talk to Lucy herself.

I think I managed not to be too fan girly during the course of this interview. You can let me know if I succeeded or not. It really is such a treat to welcome her to Bedside Reading, to think about her book When the Dust Settles, and also about her new book Come What May, which is going to be released in the UK in May 2025.

Find Lucy on social media here:

https://bsky.app/profile/lucygobag.bsky.social

https://twitter.com/LucyGoBag

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Today I am talking to Kas Hawes, a GP in the North of England, about her book, The Heart of the Matter, A Day in the Life of a GP. On the jacket, it is described as "a unique story, the story of a doctor and the many patients she sees every day, a tale of the diversity of life, the uniqueness of individuals and the impact of deprivation on the health of society". The blurb goes on to say this is a book about "being human, the challenge of being on the front line, trying to heal with kindness whilst fighting in an extra rising tide of need."

This is such a good book. I'm a GP. I didn't learn anything new from it, but it wasn't a busman's holiday sort of a book. It really was one that made me think. I'm a little bit jealous actually that I didn't write it myself because Kas really does represent so well the consultations that are going on every day in every health centre. I really love the way that she reflects before and after those incidents with patients and really gives us some insight into the way that GPs think. It's a really good book and I really really enjoy talking to Kas about it.

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What a treat recording this episode was. Such a privilege to meet one of my medical writing heroes, Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan to talk about her book, Unheard, The Medical Practice of Silencing. If you haven't read it yet, oh my goodness, I'm actually quite jealous. You're in for a real treat. It's an absolutely wonderful book.

I listened to the audiobook and it felt like having Rageshri with me as I was pottering around the house doing my chores and as I was driving to work though it's a very beautiful book in hard copy version as well. It has been an absolute joy and delight to talk to Rageshri about her really wonderful and very very important book which I think is for everybody.

we also mentioned this book and amazing writer: https://wellcomecollection.org/books/divided

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I was so glad to get to talk to GP Amy Fulton about Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. This is an astonishingly good dystopian fiction novel, which I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed. It's unusual to find a novel that really has you gripped, sucked into another world imagining something unimaginable and then brought back to earth again and again and again when you realise that this is fiction and of course this is not happening in Ireland where this book is set but that there is a lot more reality in what Paul Lynch is writing about than we want there to be.

Prophet Song is an incredibly, incredibly good book, which has really made me think so much. And it was a real joy to talk to Amy about it and think about some of the themes in there that can really make a difference to us as healthcare professionals.

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I'd like to dedicate today's episode of Bedside Reading to Corporal Hugh Cunningham of the Royal Engineers. Hugh died in 2009 as a result of PTSD. And as I read Matthew Green's Aftershock: the Untold Story of Surviving Peace, I thought a lot about him and his family, as well as more widely about other military veterans affected by PTSD.

I've really enjoyed my conversation with Manchester Portfolio GP Zalan Alam today. It is such an important book. I'm not going to lie and say I really enjoyed it. I didn't. I found it an incredibly difficult read. But it is a very, very important book about a subject which we really are not talking enough about.And I really do think this is a book that everybody and anybody who's working anywhere in the health service should be picking up

Aftershock is a book about PTSD, it's a book about military veterans, about what we are doing and sadly not doing to support them. I recognise that a lot has happened in the 10 years since the book was published so perhaps things are better than they were then. I'm not sure and I don't think we can be complacent and I don't think we can think enough about this incredibly vulnerable group of patients.

It's a deservedly emotional and tough read, but we do really need to be thinking about this a lot more and we really need to be doing better.

If you want your practice to become a RCGP Veteran Friendly Practice find out more here https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/view.php?id=803

It may help to signpost patients to Veteran's Gateway
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/find-support-for-veterans-and-their-families

Zalan also recommends http://www.overcoming.co.uk

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I love coming back to books I've read in the past that I've half remembered and half forgotten and it's one of those episodes today. I'm delighted to welcome Sarah Marwick to Bedside Reading to talk about Never Split the Difference: negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss. This is such an accessible brilliant book written by a former FBI hostage negotiator. You may think, what on earth has hostage negotiation got to do with working in the and NHS? Actually, there are huge numbers of transferable skills and strategies that we can use in our conversations with patients and with colleagues and with managers. And this is just such a great book, so readable, so accessible, and and full of practical tips and the lived experience wisdom. It was really, really good to explore these with Sarah and think about how we might use them in our professional and social contexts.

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I'm really pleased to welcome GP, lifestyle medicine expert and GP educator Anish Kotecha to Bedside Reading today. We are talking about a book called Age Proof by Rose Ann Kenny. You may be relieved to discover that when we say the science of aging, we are not talking about the science fiction of anti-aging and we're certainly not talking about chemicals or drugs or modifications of anything other than lifestyle. It was really good to talk to Anish about connection, about intimacy, about the quality of relationships, about purpose, about exercise: things that actually are within our power as healthcare professionals to start exploring with our patients. We need to be thinking about the evidence base behind that and how we communicate it more effectively.

Follow Anish on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anish-kotecha-547a4495

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Happy New Year listeners! Have you made any New Year's resolutions? Have you decided that 2025 is the year where things are going to be different? Have you been thinking about boundaries? Or about well-being? Or about that hideous word resilience which is so misused by NHS managers and has come to be a bit of a dirty word when actually the concept is a really good one.

Today, I'm delighted to be talking to Chrissie Mowbray and Karen Forshaw about their book, How to Rise: a Complete Resilience Manual. This is a really innovative book, which is all about providing us with easily accessible tools to make us better, to be thinking about resilience in a sense of emotional resilience, psychological resilience, physical resilience, relationship resilience, and to try and be better versions of our best selves. It's a really accessible, useful book and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Chrissie and Karen.

Find Karen and Chrissie here: https://www.resilientpractice.co.uk/

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I've got a collaborative Twixtmas special coming up today. I've asked a number of friends of the podcast to tell us about their top read of 2024 and what they're most looking forward to reading in 2025. Thanks for joining me in 2024, and I'm looking forward to sharing plenty more books with you in 2025.

Featured today are the voices and choices of:
Sabina Dosani https://sabinadosani.com/
Leah Hazard https://www.leahhazard.co.uk/
Derek Ochiai https://twitter.com/DrDerekOchiai
Helen Blomfield https://www.helenblomfield.co.uk/
Pim Dhahan https://www.linkedin.com/in/pim-dhahan-1a21a5b9/
Nicola Ennis https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-ennis-3b5ab1215/
Claire McKie https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-mckie-a54a52234/
Nicola Davis https://bsky.app/profile/drnicoladavis.bsky.social and https://bsky.app/profile/crxeate.bsky.social
Anna Baverstock https://bsky.app/profile/annabav.bsky.social
David Hindmarsh https://www.youtube.com/c/GPTemplates
Kate Wharton https://www.instagram.com/katewharton27/?hl=en
Dani Hall https://x.com/danihalltweets and https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/

The books we recommended are:

Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan
Song of the Whole Wide World by Tamarin Norwood
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In Memoriam by Alice Wynn
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li
The Trees by Percival Everett
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris
Divided by Annabel Sowemimo
How to Save Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Unheard by Rageshri Dhairyawan
Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdal
You be Mother by Meg Mason
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The books we are looking forward to are:

Heartstopper 6 by Alice Oseman
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Book of Dust Trilogy by Philip Pullman
The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
Tell me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
The 5th book in Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club Series
The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Poems as Friends by Fiona Bennett
Kokoro by Beth Kempton
Microskills by Adaira Landry and Reesa E Lewiss
Your Worry Makes Sense Martin Brunet
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

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I imagine there may be lots of listeners who are very familiar with Marion Keyes and the Walsh family so it was a great joy today to be talking to Rosie Shire about the latest in the Walsh family saga, My Favourite Mistake by Marion Keyes. There is some typical Marion Keyes in that you know that nothing really, really bad is ever going to happen, that the plot is going to keep you going as you go along and there's going to be nothing truly miserable.

There's quite a lot of depth in this story as we follow Anna, 47, recently split from a long-term relationship, as she moves to small town Ireland from New York. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for a start, a local GP is not going to give her HRT.

Rosie and I had a great conversation about what it is to be middle aged, about relationships, about menopause, about access to HRT. I really hope you're going to enjoy listening to what we had to say.

We mentioned some menopause training resources:
https://thebms.org.uk/
https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Education-and-Training/essentials-of-menopause-care.aspx
https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/
https://drjengunter.com/

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Today's book is one like nothing else I've ever read. It's a real treat to talk to liaison psychiatrist Amy Gledhill about In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Mercado. This is an extraordinary memoir. It is incredibly beautifully written and it is ostensibly about a controlling and abusive relationship with the complicating factor of being a queer relationship. There's much more to it than that. It is incredibly beautifully written, very very short chapters, so incredibly readable and
quick and though deep and one that you might well want to go back to again and again.

There is so much learning and reflection in the book and I've really really enjoyed exploring it with Amy.

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It's a huge treat today to welcome Chella Quint OBE to Bedside Reading. Chella is a period activist and educator from Sheffield and she is the author of two absolutely wonderful books including Own Your Period: a fact-filled guide to period positivity which I think is quite possibly one of the best non-fiction books for young people that you could ever want to read. It is phenomenal for older people as well and for grown-ups, for doctors, for anybody, definitely definitely one to put on your Christmas list to give to lots of people. It's a book that debunks so many period myths and answers so many potentially unanswered questions.

I had a great conversation with Chella. Please do follow her period positive website https://periodpositive.com/

and and her social media:
https://www.instagram.com/period_positive/

https://twitter.com/PeriodPositive

https://www.facebook.com/periodpositive/

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A warm welcome today to former GP and now headache specialist, Dr Janice Heath, who joins me today to talk about The Outrun, Amy Liptrot's memoir of alcoholism, addiction, recovery and living in Orkney. It's a really beautiful book which has been made into a very recent film starring Saoirse Ronan and the storytelling and the imagery in the book are absolutely stunning. (Janice has watched the film. I haven't yet. I've seen the trailers though and actually the images seem just as Amy describes them and in her beautiful, beautiful writing.) There's a lot to think about here in terms of thinking about addiction and recovery: addiction and the path through from chaos into something manageable. I really enjoyed talking to Janice much in the same way that I really enjoyed the book.

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It's a welcome back today to psychiatrist Gill Patterson, who's here to talk about the Scottish Book Trust's Book Week Scotland publication of 2024, which is called Hope. This is a collection of true stories written by people from Scotland. The Scottish Book Trust produce 65,000 free copies of Hope which are available in Scotland or from the Scottish Book Trust website https://shop.scottishbooktrust.com/products/hope-book It was brilliant to talk to Gill both about her own story that is featured in this collection and about what this collection means and why the Scottish Book Trust are such a fabulous organisation.

We mentioned some resources around perinatal mental illness

RCGP perinatal toolkit https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=13115&chapterid=606

RCPsych https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/post-natal-depression

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It's a real joy today to welcome GP Eugenia Lee back to Bedside Reading to talk about Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See, which is a fabulous novel. It's historical fiction based on the true character of Tan Yunxian who was a doctor in 15th century China . She lived to the ripe age of about 92 and published a book of her cases in 1511. That book survived into the current day and Lisa See has picked that up, and what is known of Lady Tan and then created this fabulous historical novel. It's a really, really good read and I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Eugenia about it.

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It was a huge honour to get an email from Rachel Zimmerman's publicist asking if I would consider reading a pre-publication copy of her new book, Us After, and to have Rachel on the show. Us After is the astonishing memoir of Rachel and her daughters' lives after the death of her husband Seth by suicide.

Before you think this is all going to be very, very depressing, it really isn't. It's an incredibly important and insightful book which Rachel describes as being "a little window for those people who say, 'I can't imagine what it must have been like'" because she wanted to give other people a sense it. There's family life. There are tears. There is the incomprehensible death of her beloved husband and through it so much optimism and hope and a sense of needing to move forwards. I absolutely loved Us, After and I have really, really enjoyed talking to Rachel.

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Welcome to the first episode of season 8 of Bedside Reading!!

I am delighted today to welcome Martin Billington back to Bedside Reading to talk about you don't have to be mad to work here, the memoir of Benji Waterhouse, NHS psychiatrist and stand-up comedian.

It was great fun to hear Benji talk about his book and when I saw him live a couple of years ago and and I was really excited when the book came out that I really desperately wanted to read it. It didn't disappoint and it was really interesting to talk to Martin. We explore the power of humour, the power of black comedy, recognition of the stresses that people, particularly those working in mental health services, are under, and the value and power of storytelling to make sense of what is going on in our lives. It's a brilliant book and I really, really enjoyed talking to Martin about it.

Martin has his own podcast "So what happened to us all?" listen here: https://martinbillington1.podbean.com/

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It's a rewind episode today. I think lots of people have been watching the incredible season three of Heartstopper on Netflix. If you haven't, you certainly should. If you've not discovered Heartstopper at all, you've got such a treat if you want to binge all three series (or better still to pick up the wonderful graohic novels by Alive Oseman).

I've chosen to bring back an episode, an episode that's actually been one of the most downloaded episodes of Bedside Reading ever,and that is me talking to GP Ellie Corso about one of the Heartstopper associated novellas: This Winter. This short and brilliant novella features in series three of Heartstopper as one of the episodes, I think episode five in the current series. It is such a wonderful short novel, there is so much to talk about and I think with all the Heartstopper fever we have around at the moment it's only right to bring it back. Enjoy.

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A warm welcome today to Rebecca Henleywillis, who describes herself as a "Patchwork GP". Listen on to find out what a patchwork GP is. (spoiler: I love the term and I think I'm going to start using it myself fairly soon.)

This is the final episode of season seven of Bedside Reading, and we are talking about Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. This is an astonishing memoir. Fern Brady is a comedian. Many of you may have seen her on Taskmaster. She is articulate. She is funny. She is capable. She is autistic.

This book explores her life, some of the challenges she's had, and her late diagnosis of autism. It was really, really good to talk to Rebecca and think particularly about autism in women but also autism as a later life diagnosis and thinking about adjustments, families, the myriad of ways that we can make things better or worse for people. We also spent some time thinking about autism in healthcare professionals and how easy it is to miss and how important it is to ask the right questions. I've loved revisiting this book and I've thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Rebecca.

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Trigger warning: baby loss

This episode is especially for baby loss awareness week. Tamarin Norwood's incredible book about her son Gabriel

In the Lancet:

Wakley Prize Essay in the Lancet (2021)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02690-8/fulltext

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02797-5/fulltext

About the book online:

If you want to buy the book: https://theindigopress.com/product/the-song-of-the-whole-wide-world/)

(or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Whole-Wide-World-gut-wrenching/dp/191164873X)

Essay in the Sunday Times: https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/how-losing-my-baby-changed-my-idea-of-motherhood-r8jvdlcjb

Essay in the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/baby-loss-ronaldo-child-grief-b2060596.html

Reviews of the book in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/grieve-child-book-tamarin-norwood-memoir-pregnancy-death

the TLS: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/in-brief/the-song-of-the-whole-wide-world-tamarin-norwood-book-review-julia-bueno

and T&F journal Life Writing: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14484528.2024.2384755

The book and other writing-related work in healthcare:

THE SONG OF THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD been added to medical and midwifery curricula in the UK (Cambridge University and Warwick Med School) and in Australia (Newcastle School of Nursing and Midwifery), and is now gifted to bereaved families by one baby loss charity (Held In Our Hearts) and was a World Book Day recommendation by Sands, the UK's principal baby loss charity. It is the subject of two case studies exploring the role of literature in compassionate healthcare training, to be presented at the upcoming NHS NES Conference.
'FROM THE HEART' NOTELETS are packs of note cards with memory and writing prompts for parents whose baby has sadly died. These were created by Tamarin Norwood and Scottish baby loss charity Held In Our Hearts with HEIC funding, and are now provided for bereaved parents across 5 NHS Boards in Scotland as part of their baby loss support, and are increasingly being taken up by hospitals in England including Great Ormond St Hospital.

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2023/march/baby-loss-writing-resources-tamarin-norwood-study/

I proposed these notecards in the following article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14484528.2021.1871705

Contact:t.g.norwood@lboro.ac.uk
@TamarinNorwood on

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It is a great pleasure today to welcome novelist Jane Campbell to Bedside Reading. Jane is here today to talk about her first novel: Interpretations of Love. Regular listeners may know that I've talked about one of Jane's books before, which is a short story collection called Cat Brushing, which I absolutely loved and it was a treat to be sent a copy of this new book by her publishers with an invitation to talk to Jane herself. Jane was a group analyst and then became a writer in her late 70s, publishing her first book in her 80s and I think she's a real inspiration that it's never too late to start writing but that also to remember that as we interact with people and as we work with them we will collect stories and we will get a better understanding of what a narrative is and different people's perspectives and that probably actually makes people better writers. It's been a real joy talking to Jane and I'm really hoping you're going to enjoy our conversation.

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A warm welcome back today to Bedside Reading to Catriona Davis. This is Catriona's fourth time on the podcast, and it's a real treat to have her back. We're talking about All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett, which is an absolutely extraordinary memoir. It is a mixture of a book about plants, gardening, and apothecary garden. I hope I've said that right. It's a book about loss, about grief,
about social change, about expectations, rural poverty and having a child with a long-term condition. It's not an easy read and some of the themes that Catriona and I talk about today may be triggering for some listeners but I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. It's a book I would never in a million years have picked up had Catriona not suggested it to me but it's definitely one that's made me think and one I've really really enjoyed thinking about.

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If I'm a bit overexcitable and squealy today, it's because I'm having a proper fangirl moment talking to Dr Lucy Pollock about her second book, The Golden Rule, Listens in Living from a Doctor of Ageing. Ever since I started this podcast, Lucy has been one of my dream guests, so today really has been a dream come true in that she's very generously given up her time to talk about her wonderful book but also to talk about what it is that she does.

It was such a joy to talk about why it is so important to focus on doing less better. Why it is so important that we really think holistically about people. and why we really need to start having conversations which might seem quite difficult. we explore those conversations which are absolutely vital and which are so well received by patients, particularly those who are older and those so who know what they want and they don't want and are at risk of being in a system which does things to them for the sake of it rather than because it's the right thing to do.

Follow Lucy on Twitter (X) here: https://x.com/lucypgeridoc

If you've not discovered Lucy's first book The Book About Getting Older it is absolutely wonderful too, you can listen to an episode of Bedside Reading from March 2024 when I discuss that book with GP Registrar Lauren Wallis here https://bedsidereading.buzzsprout.com/1880290/episodes/14670381-the-book-about-getting-older

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It's a first on bedside reading today in that I've got three guests rather than my customary one and occasional two. I am delighted to welcome to the podcast Beth Osmond, Eleanor Holmes and Sarah Raybould, three doctors who are also published poets. We are going to be talking today about Kathryn Bevis's beautiful collection, The Butterfly House, which on the cover is described as "the story of a life before and after a late stage cancer diagnosis". In the podcast today, we've chosen to focus on three of the cancer poems from this beautiful little book.

I would like to point out though that there are lots of other poems in the collection which are perhaps less dark and more reflective of Kathryn Bevis's wonder with life, the importance of living and really that theme of living with a long-term condition, recognising cancer as a life-changing and potentially life-limiting condition. but something that people are more and more living with rather than necessarily being cured of or dying from. It's a wonderful collection and it is moving, it is thought-provoking, it is funny. I really enjoyed it and I've really loved my conversation today with Beth, Eleanor and Sarah.

If you'd like to follow any of these wonderful poets

Find Sarah here:

https://www.instagram.com/raybould_sarah/
https://underneaththisskin.com

Find Beth here:

https://twitter.com/bethosmond
https://www.instagram.com/osmond_beth/

Find Eleanor here:
https://twitter.com/eliot_north
https://www.dreleanorholmes.com/

and if you'd like to buy a copy of this gorgeous collection please order direct from Seren Books here https://www.serenbooks.com/book/the-butterfly-house/

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I am so delighted to be talking to Emily Katy, the author of Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life. I love talking to authors. I'm always fascinated to be talking to authors who are also health professionals. Emily is both: a psychiatric nurse and a writer. I've been following Emily on social media for quite a while, I was really excited when her book came out to see what it was going to be like because I'd read her blog and I'd seen a lot of other articles that she'd written. It was a real joy today to meet her properly and to be talking about her book, why she wrote her book, about her life experiences and thinking a lot about autistic women and autistic girls, why they get missed, why it is important that we think about autism and why the stereotypes that many of us have been brought up on are quite simply wrong and mean that people go without a diagnosis and unnoticed.

Follow Emily on Twitter https://twitter.com/ItsEmilyKaty
and on instagram https://www.instagram.com/itsemilykaty
Her brilliant blog is here: https://www.authenticallyemily.uk/

Emily is a trustee of the brilliant charity Autistic Girls Network find them here: https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/

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I've got two brilliant guests with me to today, Roo Shah and Jens Foell, who have written a phenomenal book called Fighting for the Soul of General Practice: the Aagorithm will see you now. This is a wonderful book, two GPs, one based in London, one based in rural North Wales writing about patient stories and the values of relational medicine, thinking about what we are at risk of losing as we try wholly appropriately to manage demand, to keep services running when there isn't enough money and there aren't enough staff.

But what we're losing by doing it, and whether in fact it's okay to stand up and say, "I don't want to be replaced by a computer". I've long said that the things that are of the most value are those which are not directly measurable and so I absolutely loved Jens and Roo's book. It's very, very readable and it'll make you think, but it won't hurt your head. It's not difficult. It's not dense text. They are both phenomenal storytellers, and this is really about stories and the value of what lies beneath the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg perhaps being a diagnosis but recognising there is so so much more going on and really what we risk losing if we don't remember that.

I love the book and I have really really enjoyed talking to Jens and Roo and I would really strongly encourage you to go and buy yourself a copy of this book as soon as you possibly can.

Roo mentions the brilliant short story The Machine Stops by E M Forster you can read it online here: http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/59/59.pdf

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A warm welcome back today to James Thambirajah, who is here to talk to me about a book called Heart, a History by Sandip Jauhar. This is, I will confess, a book that I probably might not have picked up voluntarily but James is very persuasive, and I'm really glad I did pick it up, because once I had I was absolutely compelled to keep reading. Sandip Jawa is a wonderful writer. He's a cardiologist based in the USA. And this interweaves stories, stories of people, stories of Sandeep's own life, story of patients, stories of his family, with the history of cardiology. The history of cardiology. I didn't really know a huge amount about the history of cardiology it is just fascinating to realise how far we've come over the last 50 or 100 years. I'm really thinking about the bravery of the people who chose to give up everything to explore what they thought might be going on. We've got stories of young doctors passing wires into their own arms and legs in the earliest angiograms. We've got prototype bypass machines being built. We've got people making cardiac pacemakers in their kitchens. It's absolutely incredible, really, really exciting. And I would say I'm not even particularly interested in cardiology, but this is holistic cardiology. This is the history of medicine with some cardiology and some humanity and thinking about hearts in the sense of the heart and soul of a person. It's a cracking read and I've loved talking to James about it.

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It's a warm welcome back to a guest today. I'm delighted to be talking to Susan Matthew about Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Susan came on the podcast a couple of years ago and I got an email from her out of the blue recently saying, "I've just read this book, it's absolutely brilliant, I think you'd really like it and I really need to talk about it on the podcast" and I was really quite intrigued. I picked it up and it said on the cover that it was a crime novel and my heart slightly sank because I'm not a huge crime fan. But actually, I'm not convinced that this book is a crime novel. It's just a brilliant, brilliant novel with some twists and turns along the way. Maybe that's how you define what crime is. There are loads of themes in here. It's a great book. Lots and lots of things to think about, whether those are ed for adverse childhood experiences, the power of community, the importance of transitional objects, how we learn, whether labels matter. There is so much to talk about and so much to think about, and I really enjoyed talking to Susan today.

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Regular listeners will know that I love talking to writers and I love poetry. So what a joy it is today to welcome Anna Davidson to Bedside Reading to talk about her debut poetry collection: Poetry for Life and Other Chronic Conditions. Anna's poems are absolutely beautiful. It's a very beautiful little book, it's got a gorgeous cover and the contents, both the poems and the writing around the poems and the sense of why Anna wrote these poems, what they mean for her and what she hopes they might achieve for the world is just fabulous. and If you're thinking of a collection to recommend, I can't really think of anything else that is quite like it. In terms of thinking about invisible illness, thinking about disability, thinking about recovery, thinking about missing out, some of the psychological effects of living with a physical long-term condition, um It's absolutely unbeatable, certainly something I'm going to be using in my teaching and it's a collection I think I will come back to again and again.

Anna recommended https://www.theyogaforlifeproject.co.uk/

Link to buy the book from all retailers:

https://books2read.com/poetryforlife

Poetry on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mondayispoetry/

Author website:

https://therightword.co.uk/

Amazon link to buy the book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetry-Life-Other-Chronic-Conditions-ebook/dp/B0D5VWQDRK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._vNdz86YT_1x-XcrFRc6ZyigquxkN6XBRpe5__1MlJpj4bmAGtIn0TyJ1PW2nmtuEkubRrff3Z_LLlYIQZV9mtzVNl7OIGC2DLXCPq6LDT2M1AMixviEn5P7a7lTT-7H.8lMSqBB0IJZ5Zl5htpdSWpWVCi0egqDE-_VmL9s5BtU&qid=1722246103&sr=8-1

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A warm welcome back to GP, educator and YouTube sensation, Dave Hindmarsh. Today we are going to be talking about Turn the Ship Around, which is a really interesting book about leadership. Don't switch off if you're not interested in leadership, there is so much here that is transferable. And the thing I really enjoyed about To Turn the Ship Around is that it is not a book that is telling you what to do. It is somebody reflecting on their own experiences, somebody thinking about failure, about intelligent failures, thinking about how you can reflect on situations that you have predicted will go one way and that end up going another way.

Dave and I explore how you can learn from that and how you can turn quite a dysfunctional disparate organisation into something that really works, an organisation which people are proud to be part of. And I found that really, really compelling from the perspective of being a leader, from the perspective of being a teacher. And also I think from the perspective of being within an organisation, what it is to have a leader-leader model rather than a leader-follower model. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I've really enjoyed exploring it with Dave.

Dave an I mentioned some other brilliant resources

The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters
The You are Not a Frog podcast https://youarenotafrog.com/
The Conversational Framework as described by Diana Laurillard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSP2YlgTldc

Find Dave's brilliant YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/GPTemplates

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I've got a cracking episode coming up for you today. I'm delighted to be joined by Joe Thomas, a hospitalist, from Buffalo in New York to talk about the Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. I loved Abraham Verghese first novel Cutting for Stone more than I can begin to tell you and it's a book that's got a special place in my heart because it was the first book that we read as part of the medical humanities book club and which I set up twelve years ago and which is still running. I knew that Abraham Verghese had a new book out and I sensed it was going to be an absolute cracker but I hadn't got around to reading it and then I had an email from Joe asking had I read it yet and please could he come on and talk about it because he was thinking about it so much. This is a book set in India in the early twentieth century, taking us up through until the later twentieth Century. There's quite a lot of medicine in the book. Really credible medicine because Abraham Verghese is a wonderful novelist and he's also a doctor. So you don't need to get irritated by the medicine being wrong. There are themes around family, around education, about history, secrets, support, communities, intersectionality, medical negligence the end of an empire. Oh my goodness there is so much in this book and if you pick it up and you think "gosh it's very long", it flies by because it is absolutely absorbing. I loved it so much and I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed talking to Joe today about it.

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Today's episode is all about a very short and very powerful novel by Max Porter, Shy. In 122 pages Max Porter inhabits the mind of a very troubled teenage boy called Shy. Nicola Ennis, my guest, and I both have quite significant life experiences of working with children and young people think that this is probably the best insight into the mind of a troubled teenage boy that you could possibly wish to have. It is quite dark. It's also funny. It's just an incredible insight and I think there is so much to talk about in terms of how we respond to young people how we respond to young people in distress and what it takes to remain. The grown-up in a situation where a distressed young person is behaving in a way that you wish they weren't and to be honest, they wish they weren't too I really hope you're going to enjoy our conversation today.

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A warm welcome back to a previous guest today. It's a real joy to be talking to Professor Ellie Hothersall-Davis from the University of Dundee. We have come up with today six books which we think would be really, really good as reading material before starting a medical degree.

Maybe people listening who have got children or godchildren or nieces or nephews or next door neighbours who are planning to become doctors. Arguably actually perhaps becoming any sort of healthcare professional because I think the themes for all of these books are translatable across healthcare and Ellie and I wanted to think about what we could suggest to people to be reading that aren't textbooks that will give them enjoyment and escapism and help them to promote empathy, to think about things from another perspective, to lose themselves in a book whilst also being able to think more deeply about something they might never previously have considered. We've got six cracking books coming up today and I really hope that you are going to enjoy thinking about them.

The books we discussed:

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Cure for Good Intentions by Sophie Harrison
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

We also briefly mentioned the Beekeeper of Alleppo

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A warm welcome back today to Victoria Kinkaid who's here to talk about Clytemnestra's bind by Susan C Wilson. This is a modern retelling of a story from Greek mythology that of Queen Clytemenestra , unwilling wife of Agamemnon. I really enjoyed my conversation with Victoria. If you've not come across her before he has been on the podcast before and she was here last year talking about a brilliant nonfiction title Half the Sky. Today we are talking fiction. We are talking Greek Mythology, we are talking about feminism, we are talking about the role of women in health care, we're talking about domestic abuse, we're talking about trauma and PTSD We talk about people pleasers, we talk about boundaries, we talk about so many things. It is a really really good book even for somebody like me who doesn't much like Greek mythology.

It's a warm welcome back today to Lizz Lidbury who joins me to talk about The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr. This is such an accessible brilliant book. It's described in a lot of reviews as being for people who loved Eleanor Oliphant and I admit I did love Eleanor Oliphant but I'm not convinced that it is so similar to Eleanor Oliphant to need to be pigeonholed in that way.

Lizz and I have had a really enjoyable time talking about it thinking about the characters some of the wonderful cast within the book. We thought about the difference between listening to an audiobook when the characters have particular voices or are portrayed in particular ways by the narrator. We talk about social isolation. We talk about scaffolding young people. We talk about hopes and aspirations and about biscuits.

We also mentioned our love of this facebook Medics book group https://www.facebook.com/groups/135276503690822

We recommend the charity Autistic Girls Network which is a wonderful charity and maybe just like the one Elvira finds support from online https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/

It's a welcome back for my guest this week! I'm delighted to have Jo Maher GP and active travel enthusiast from Sheffield one the podcast to talk about Selena Goddon's fabulous collection Pessimism is for Lightweights. Jo and I had a great conversation about how much we love these poems. We talk about activism. We talk about the tension that there sometimes is as a healthcare professional around "are we allowed to be activists" (the answer to that question is very definitely Yes) we talk about whether it is better to seek forgiveness than permission. We talk about using humour. We talk about agency. Talk about the frustrations of the world that we both currently live and practice in and how quiet activism might be the way forwards for people as they are building up their courage muscles.

Joining me today on the podcast is forensic psychiatrist Gill Patterson and we are talking about The Panopticon by Jenny Fagan. This is an absolutely brilliant book which I read in a day on holiday. There are many themes which are quite dark, quite thought provoking and I think Anais, the central character, will stay with me for a very very long time.

Gill and I talk about forensic services, especially forensic services for women. We talk about adverse life experiences we talk about normal responses to abnormal situations, we talk about the care system, we talk about connecting with young people and about seeing people holistically as their three dimensional selves. The Panopticon is a brilliant brilliant novel which I would really really recommend that you read and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Gill about it today.

Welcome to Season 7 !!!!! I am so excited to launch this new season with an episode which is all about the Women's Prize shortlist.

I'm delighted to welcome book-tuber Sarah Cubitt to Bedside Reading. Sarah has a wonderful YouTube book channel called Your True Shelf. https://www.youtube.com/c/yourtrueshelf

Sarah and I are talking about the 6 books which have made this year's Women's Prize shortlist. The prize winner is announced on June 13th so if you are listening today, 4th June when it comes out you have nine days to get your way through the shortlist or perhaps to pick one of the ones that we discuss to read before the prize is announced and see if we were right in terms of the book that we would both most like to win. Interestingly we both picked the same one! Are we in line with the judges? who knows, we might need to wait to find out. It's been a real joy talking to Sarah and it's been really good fun to read books which have come off a shortlist and really to be thinking about their merits compared one with another.

The books on the shortlist are:

Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville
River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright

You can buy them all (and support my favourite bookshop Scarthin Books) here https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/scarthinbooks

Sarah also recommended https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/09/stay-with-me-by-ayobami-adebayo-review and https://www.thebibliophilegirluk.com/2018/05/big-bones-by-laura-dockrill/ both written by judges for this year's prize.

It's a first today and that is my first medical student guest on the podcast!! A huge welcome to Omar Al-Rubaie, a third year medical student at the University Of Sheffield who is here to talk about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It's a first also because this is the first Douglas Adams I've ever read. I'd been aware of Hitchhiker's Guide for a very long time and I had never read it. I confess, I had never wanted to read it and as I was reading it in preparation for the podcast I was thinking "oh my goodness. What have I done". I will say I don't think I'm the target audience for the book and I didn't really get it.

You may be relieved to discover that after a conversation with Omar I've started to see that there is so much more in the book than I was getting out of first reading. And I suppose that's one of those reasons why reading books and talking about them is so enormously valuable to get the most out of them. Will I be going on to read the sequel? Pretty unlikely! Did I really enjoy my conversation with Omar? Oh my goodness Yes!! Whether you are a fan of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, somebody who loathes the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or somebody who listens to the podcast and has absolutely no idea what we're talking about so far, I hope you're going to enjoy this conversation.

It's an absolute joy today to welcome Dr Adaira Landry and Dr Resa Lewiss to Bedside Reading. They have written an absolutely phenomenal book which is called Microskills: small actions big impact. The tagline for the book is "buy this book on Friday be better at your job on Monday" and I think that this claim really really does live up to the hype.

This is a brilliantly accessible book. It is so practical. It is so readable. It has the potential to change anyone's work life and possibly even their home life as well. I've been thinking about who I want to recommend it to: I can't imagine anybody that wouldn't really benefit from it. I'm certainly going to be buying it for my new gp registrars and I do think if you've got somebody in your life who is about to start their career, maybe somebody who's just passed their finals because this episode is going out in the UK just at the time that people are getting their results and people are starting to think about starting their Foundation Program. This could be an absolutely fantastic book for those people to be thinking about how they can make the most of themselves keep themselves safe keep themselves well read the room understand the organisational culture and really get the most out of their life. It's a fabulous book I loved talking to Adaira and Resa and I really hope you'll enjoy listening to our conversation.

Find the authors on Twitter here
https://twitter.com/AdairaLandryMD
https://twitter.com/ResaELewiss

You might also enjoy Resa's podcast https://www.thevisiblevoicespodcast.com/

A warm welcome today to Jordan Napier Morrow, staff development lead in the School of Medicine at Dundee University. We are talking about Richard's Shepherd's brilliant book Unnatural causes which is a memoir of one of Britain's most high profile forensic pathologists. There is an enormous amount in this book to take away: stories of cases we may have heard of, cases we won't have heard of but also interwoven is Richard Shepherd's own story how he became a pathologist, the impact of being a pathologist combining pathology with family life and some of his reflections on the effect that this job and this life has had on his mental health. It's a phenomenal book and I really really enjoyed talking to Jordan about it.

Follow Jordan on Twitter here https://twitter.com/jjnapier

A warm welcome today to Dani Hall who is here to talk about Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island . This is a book that I'd heard quite a lot about and not picked up until Dani suggested that I ought to read it. I started reading and had to text her after about 5 minutes to say "oh my goodness this is so good, why haven't I picked this up before?" so I really hope you're going to enjoy our conversation today. The book tells the story of four generations of women in a family in Ireland. We think about teenage pregnancy, we think about what it is to be a teenager, we think about the role of women of society, of the need for scaffolding, of wisdom and compassion. It's a brilliant book and I thoroughly enjoy talking to Dani about it.

Dani and I first connected via https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/ which is an amazing paediatric Free Open Access Medical Education resource. DFTB also run conferences and live events and I'm fortunate to teach on the MSc in Paediatric Emergency Medicine which Dani is a course director for https://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/coursefinder/courses/paediatric-emergency-medicine-online-msc/

Today is a special episode of the podcast where I'm welcoming friends, leaders from all sorts of branches of healthcare to share a book that means something to them about leadership.

We would like to dedicate this episode to the memory of Dr Jenny Vaughan who died recently. She was perhaps best known for her campaigning work with Doctors Association UK, https://www.dauk.org/ leading the learn not blame campaign and championing the concept of just culture as well as for campaigning on behalf of Mr David Sellu and Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garber. In this she was the embodiment of authentic allyship and anti-racist leadership and a role model for us all.

Some of the book choices in this episode might well be on a leadership course reading list, some probably aren't. All of them should be though I suppose it depends who's writing the list and what they mean by leadership! I hope here we have a diversity of thought and a number of reflections on the different facets of leadership on what they mean to these wonderful people who are leaders in their own fields.

We have some classic children's fiction: The Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland. We have a military leadership manual. We have books about psychology, about self-help, we have short stories and all sorts of others. A huge thank you to everyone who's been involved in making this episode and I hope that after you've listened you really will be in a position to take your leadership to the next level.

Partha Kar recommends The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
https://twitter.com/parthaskar

Anna Baverstock recommends Dare to Lead byBrene Brown
https://twitter.com/anna_annabav

Erin Carn-Bennett recommends Think Again by Adam Grant
https://twitter.com/erincarnbennett

Caroline Walker aka The Joyful Doctor recommends the Jeeves and Wooster series by PG Wodehouse
https://twitter.com/joyful_doctor

Evie Mensah recommends Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uche Blackstock
https://twitter.com/eveosh

Helen Blomfield recommends Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux
https://twitter.com/helenblomfield8

Nicola Fisher recommends Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
https://twitter.com/NicolaFisherRN

Dave Hindmarsh recommends Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet
https://twitter.com/GP_Templates

Margaret Ikpoh recommends Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
https://twitter.com/docmagsy

Claire McKie recommends The Promise that Changes Everything by Nancy Kline
https://twitter.com/claire_mckie_

It's a real honour today to welcome Professor Chloe Orkin to Bedside Reading . Chloe is a researcher, an HIV specialist, a doctor, and an unwell woman and we talk about what that means in the context of Eleanor Cleghorn's brilliant book Unwell Women: a journey through medicine and myth in a man-made world. We talk about feminism, we talk about medical heroes, we talk about epistemic, testimonial and hermaneutic injustice . I've had a brilliant time talking to Chloe and she has really really made me think even more than I have done after reading Unwell Women. I really hope you'll enjoy our conversation today.

Follow Chloe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/profchloeorkin

Chloe is the immediate past president of https://www.medicalwomensfederation.org.uk/

A warm welcome today to Ben Allen, a GP from Sheffield who is here to talk to me about Amy Edmondson's second book The Right Kind of Wrong which is all about celebrating and learning from failure. Failure is something that health care professionals are not particularly good at. It's something that we are so often afraid of. So frequently people talk about airline safety and the lessons that can be learned from aviation and those that can be translated into health care and then we wonder why aren't we doing this? What's holding us back? What do we need to know to do this better?

It's such an accessible and really good book and I love Amy Edmondson anyway so it was really interesting talking to Ben who has really embraced the idea of "Intelligent failure" in trying new new things, not being afraid to try and to fail and always to see life as a learning experience. It was a delight to talk to him. It's a great book and I really hope you're going to enjoy listening.

Follow Ben on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/BenAllenGP

As many regular listeners may know I absolutely love talking to authors about their books, especially healthcare professional authors and today is one of those episodes.

I am so delighted to welcome Leah Hazard to the podcast to talk about her book Womb: the inside story of where we all began which is a phenomenal book literally for anybody. If only we could get this book into the PHSE curriculum for all young people, if only we could get all adults to read it. It is phenomenally accessible. It is scientifically so accurate and so brilliant.

Follow Leah on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hazard_leah or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leahhazard

It's a joy today to welcome back Kirsty Shires to Bedside Reading. Kirsty and I first connected last year over Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love and she emailed me a few weeks ago to tell me about a book that she thought I ought to read which actually I had read before many years ago! I've absolutely loved coming back to it. Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of a Hmong refugee family and their daughter Lia set in California in the early nineties and some of the culture clash and culture shock that exists between their understanding of their daughter's condition, epilepsy, which in their language means "the spirit catches you and you fall down" and her American doctors. It is a phenomenal read. It was wonderful to talk to Kirsty today about some of the themes from it and what we've both learned and what we've changed in our practice as a result of having read it.

One of the really big practice changing aspects for us both was discovering Arthur Klienman's eight questions which Kirsty decribes as "like ICE on steroids" and which make a HUGE difference in practice when used appropriately:
https://thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov/assets/pdfs/resource-library/arthur-kleinmans-eight-questions.pdf

Kirsty also recommended A Smell of Burning by Colin Grant
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/19/a-smell-of-burning-the-story-of-epilepsy-colin-grant-review

I'm delighted to welcome Ellen Welch, GP and writer to today's epsiode of Bedside Reading. Ellen's book Why Can't I see my GP: the past present and future of General Practice came out in February this year and feels such a topical read with everything that's been going on at the moment with the GP contract referendum. If you are a GP you might well enjoy it, recognise a lot of it and then hand it on to family and friends. But if you don't really understand how primary care works if you don't know why GPs always seem to be moaning about something as we are so frequently accused if you want to understand the health service better I would absolutely recommend it. It's quite a small book. It's very very accessible. And it's certainly one that I'm going to be recommending to medical students and to new GP registrars to give them a bit more context about the system in which they're training and working.

A warm welcome today to Alan Shirley GP and Medical Educator to talk about A Fortunate Man: The story of a country doctor. The seminal John Berger and Jean Mohr book which has to a certain extent stood the test of time and has very much been the classic book mentioned when people talk about medical humanities or about books that relate to GP training.

It's not a book just for GPs though and and I really enjoyed my conversation with Alan about the elements of this book that are problematic as well as the elements which have stood the test of time and also how beautifully it sits with Polly Morland's more recent book A Fortunate Woman.

Alan and I mention a number of models/theories of the consultation and if you want to know more or have forgotten what you once knew this is a great overview https://www.essentialgptrainingbook.com/wp-content/online-resources/04%20consultation%20models.pdf

We mentioned Darren Garvey's superb book Poverty Safari as well as Bridget Christie's comedy series "The Change" which is available on Channel 4.

As ever if you want to buy books I'd always recommend an independent bookshop, my favourite is Scarthin in Cromford and they are amazing online/by phone too: https://scarthinbooksonline.com/

Dr Lucy Pollock's The Book About Getting Older has got to be one of the most compassionate, wise and useful books I have read. It was a delight to be joined by Lauren Wallis, a GPST2 who has moved from being a gynaecologist with a single system focus to a most excellent generalist with a newfound enthusiasm for frailty.

Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear.

Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful.

Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they’re never troubled by negative emotions, she knows no other life.

When news arrives that the Asters’ eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their Sorrow. As guests flock to the Asters’ private island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise.

Then the bodies start to pile up.

With romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building, this spellbinding debut novel is immersive and unforgettable.

I'm joined by Anna Young to discuss Angie Spoto's debut novel

Ian Walsh is a Surgeon, psychosexual therapist, academic, musician and an alcoholic. We are talking about Ian's phenomenal book. The Belly of the Whale. It's quite hard to describe this book other than as the rawest most honest warts and all account of his recovery from addiction. There is so much to think about and I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I enjoyed reading it because it takes you to some very very dark places but it's a book I think I will come back to again and again. It is a book I have recommended endlessly to people I really hope that it ends up on reading lists for medical students, for nursing students, for doctors, for nurses, for anybody who is working with anyone who is an addict and recognising how common addiction is that's probably all of us.

Ian and I talked about the work of the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine https://www.ipm.org.uk/

Buy your copy of Ian's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Belly-Whale-Mr-Ian-Walsh/dp/1722187344

Today's book is a slightly different type of book to actually almost anything that I've ever read before Kinder scout the people's mountain by Ed Douglas and John Beattie looks like a coffee table book. It is big. It is full of absolutely beautiful photography but also some incredibly accessible and interesting prose about the social history and the environmental history of the area around kinder scout in the Peak District. It was a real joy today to talk to Nicola Fisher about this book, what the book has meant to her, what Kinder Scout and the outdoors mean to her and how we could all do with considering these areas a lot more in our own lives.

Follow Nicola on Twitter here https://twitter.com/NicolaFisherRN

It's Valentine's Day this week and so what better way to celebrate than with a podcast that's all about sex! I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Naomi Sutton Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV at Rotherham, star of series 1 and 2 of the E4’s ‘The Sex Clinic’ which “helps young people get their sex lives back on track” and ambassador for The Eve Appeal, a charity that raises awareness of the five gynaecological cancers, and for the FPA. In her other other media roles, she has talked frankly about vulvas, sex in old age, HIV and other sexual health subjects, on C4’s ‘Steph’s Packed Lunch’.

We are talking about Kate Lister's brilliant book A Curious History of Sex.

Follow Naomi on Twitter https://twitter.com/DrNaomiSutton

Find Kate Lister's brilliant twitter account "The Whores of Yore" here: https://twitter.com/whoresofyore

we also mentioned the brilliant bbc series "Men Up" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001twgs

A warm welcome this week to plastic surgeon Sindhoo Rangarajan who suggested to me a fascinating book which I would absolutely not have ever come across without her recommendation.

https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a37976150/exclusive-excerpt-zara-stone-killer-looks/

Sindhoo's hero/role model was Dr Elsie Inglis who is someone I think we could all do with knowing more about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Inglis

and we briefly mentioned the fabulous book Endell Street https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/17/endell-street-by-wendy-moore-review-the-suffragette-surgeons and also mentioned Chris Atkins' second book
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/time-after-time-repeat-offenders-the-inside-stories-chris-atkins/7522206?ean=9781838954666

We talk about lookism, vulnerable patients, judgement and the line between cosmetic and plastic surgery.

What a treat to welcome Maddy Hover (aka the best read zombie fiction fan known to facebook) to Bedside Reading at long last.

We are talking about The Good People by Hannah Kent and the challenges of raising children with a difference, the effects of poverty and judgement and why we want society to be so much better, kinder, less harsh than 1830s Ireland and how we fear this is not always the case.

Kent took as inspiration for her novel the story of the death of Michael Leahy and the trial of Anne Roche who advised for him to be bathed in the river Flesk every morning to drive out the fairies who had replaced him with a changling, sadly he died by drowning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Michael_Leahy#:~:text=Ann%20Roche%20was%20indicted%20for,the%20river%20Flesk%20every%20morning.

Follow Maddy on twitter here: https://twitter.com/I_am_spottacus

Dr Jen Gunter OBGYN has got to be one of my favourite social media doctors. Straight talking, easy to understand and full of wisdom and evidence based advice. Her book The Vagina Bible had been recommended repeatedly and it was great to have the push to read it when Catie Nagel contacted me to suggest we discussed it today.

Catie is a GP with a medical education research interest in Persistent Physical Symptoms. We had a great conversation about why we should not be using the phrase Medically Unexplained Symptoms, about anatomy, having good conversations, shame, explanations for patients and much more. The whole book is brilliant though Catie and I particularly enjoyed the sections on vulvodynia and vaginismus.

Follow Jen Gunter on instagram https://www.instagram.com/drjengunter/?hl=en and on Twitter https://twitter.com/DrJenGunter

Find Catie on linked in https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catie-nagel-58b18452

My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises by Fredrick Backman was, on first reading, my least favourite Backman novel. Is that because the others I've read are so very brilliant indeed? Or because I was missing something?

I'm delighted to welcome Sara from https://intensivegassingaboutbooksblog.wordpress.com/ to bedside reading to the podcast this week. Sara is possibly the definition of a bookworm, reading 4-5 novels a week and blogging about the majority of them. She's also a intensivist and a parent - the bibliophile superwoman maybe......

Happy New Year and welcome to season 6 of Bedside Reading!!

I so enjoyed meeting John Quin in 2022 at the DotMD festival. Our paths have crossed repeatedly on Twitter and then in person at Medicine Unboxed so it was a real treat to sit down together to record this episode about his memoir Medicine Man. John is a retired endocrinologist with a second career as an arts writer. Find him on Twitter https://twitter.com/JDMQuin

I loved talking about careers, changes, storytelling, opportunities and so much more.

John also has a new book out in the Arts for Health Series which is called Video

A reflective look back over 2023 and some thoughts for 2024 as I'm joined by friends of the podcast to think about their tops reads of the year and their most anticipated reads for 2023.

Huge thank you to Claire McKie, Dani Hall, Anna Baverstock, Nik Kendrew, Nicola Davis, Selina Flinders, Alan Coss, Fran Boffey, Charley Baker and Derek Ochiai and Ellie Hothersall

What a treat to welcome Catherine Bell and Stephanie Farrell Moore to Bedside Reading to talk about their wonderful small anthology of poetry by neurodivergent women Kaleidoscopic Minds. Follow them on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/kaleidoscopic_minds_poetry/Buy your copy here https://kaleidoscopicmindsuk.etsy.com/listing/1606941954
All proceeds go to Autistic Girls Network https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/

Huge thank you to https://twitter.com/Cathersbell for producing this resource list

Neurodiversity resources for patients, parents and professionals:

Autism

SIGN patient information booklets - https://www.sign.ac.uk/patient-and-public-involvement/patient-publications/autism/
Neurotribes by Steve Silberman – Book/Audiobook
What I want to talk about: How autistic special interests shape a life & Untypical by Pete Wharmby – Book/Audiobook
Chris Packham Inside our autistic minds - BBC documentary

Autism in women and girls:

https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Keeping-it-all-inside.pdf

Odd Girl Out: An autistic woman in a neurotypical world by Laura James – Book/Audiobook
Strong female character by Fern Brady – Book/Audiobook
Christine McGuinness: Unmasking my autism – BBC documentary

ADHD:

Driven to Distraction by Ed Hallowell MD and John Ratey MD – Book/Audiobook
Taking charge of adult ADHD by Russell Barkley – Book/Audiobook
ADHD Aha! by Understood – Podcast
The Disruptors – Documentary film
ADDitude magazine - https://www.additudemag.com

ADHD in women and girls:

ADHD As Females – Podcast
ADHD for smart ass women by Tracy Otsuka – Podcast
Earthed by Rebecca Schiller – Book/Audiobook
Moodswings, Meds and Mared – Documentary (Welsh with subtitles)https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4aDWG-AXCo

Dyslexia/Dyspraxia/Specific learning differences:

Everything is going to be K.O. by Kaiya Stone – Book/Audiobook
British Dyslexia Association https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk
Dyspraxia Foundation https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk

Tourettes:

https://www.tourettes-action.org.uk
Lewis Capaldi: How I’m feeling now – Netflix documentary

Parenting/School:

Your child is not broken by Heidi Mavir – Book/Audiobook
Can't Not Won't: A Story About A Child Who Couldn't Go To School by Eliza Fricker - Book
In It: Supporting kids who think and learn differently by Understood - Podcast

I'm delighted to welcome the wonderful Andy Tagg, ED consultant (and part of the DFTB team who ate lego heads and calculated their FART score as the sieved their poo to work out how long it takes to pass a swallowed plastic toy https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/27/shit-a-brick-doctors-swallow-lego-to-allay-parents-fears) to Bedside Reading this week.

Follow Andy on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/andrewjtagg

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

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

Storyland for Children by Amy Jeffs

Femina by Jamina Ramirez

Dominion by Tom Holland

England on Fire by Stephen Elcock and Matt Osman

The Ghost Theatre by Matt Osman

Lost and Never Found by Simon Mason

Dead Rich and The Conspirators by William Shaw

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.

Follow Ellie on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DundeePublicH

"It took 20 years,” writes Fergal Keane in The Madness, “before I came to the point of accepting I was addicted to war.”

This extraordinary book by War Journalist Fergal Keane is an exploration of his journey, generational trauma, PTSD, addiction and so much more.

It seems right to release this episode this week, with Armistice Day at the weekend and so much conflict and horror in the world around us currently

I loved talking to Forensic Psychiatrist Emily Ramsay about it.

https://twitter.com/drerpsych

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.

Follow Rowena on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/ChristmasRowena

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/

Cristina recommends https://www.asexuality.org/ as a great starting point if you want to know more.

Obviously follow brilliant author Alice Oseman on instagram https://www.instagram.com/aliceoseman/?hl=en and find Cristina here: https://twitter.com/munchkindr on Twitter or https://www.instagram.com/jarofmeows on instagram

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.

If you don't have a copy of it yet, get yours here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/kitchen-table-wisdom-stories-that-inspire-rachel-naomi-remen/5024712?ean=9781529045864

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.

We talked about the Civility Saves Lives movement https://www.civilitysaveslives.com/

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.

RESOURCES

https://www.mamaacademy.org.uk/professionals-hub/midwifery-resources/gender-inclusion/

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.

Her instagram is a joy to behold https://www.instagram.com/holliepoetry/

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.

Follow Sarah on Twitter here https://twitter.com/drsarahgoulding

It's a bit nerve wracking when you welcome another podcast host to guest - this week was a joy though as I'm talking to Dr Jane Currie host of https://uk-podcasts.co.uk/podcast/conversations-in-fetal-medicine about the brilliant short novel Wonder by RJ Palacio

We explore themes around kindness, accessibility, visible difference and bullying among others.

We also talked abut some resources:

https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/our-work-and-impact/children-and-families/young-carers/

https://www.civilitysaveslives.com/

Antenatal Results and Choices
https://www.arc-uk.org/

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)

Follow Sabina on Twitter here:

https://twitter.com/DrSabinaDosani

‘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:

https://twitter.com/doc_bipolar

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 Loveby 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.

Follow the author of the book, Sophie Ratcliffe here https://twitter.com/soratcli

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.....

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:

https://childprotection.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/perplexing-presentations-and-fii/

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...

Follow Nuthana on Twitter https://twitter.com/DrNuthana

Find the MWF podcast here:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-medical-women-podcast/id1606795048

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.

We mentioned the Royal College of Surgeons' publication on Sexual Assault in Surgery which you can access here: https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/epdf/10.1308/rcsbull.2021.106

As well as this article from The Times in April 2023: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sexism-surgeons-royal-college-times-health-commission-039q7fx6c#:~:text=Roshana%20Mehdian%2DStaffell%2C%2037%2C%20an%20orthopaedic%20surgeon%2C%20highlighted,her%20feel%20%E2%80%9Cextremely%20uncomfortable%E2%80%9D.

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 it's 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.

Follow Mark on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ETSshow

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.

If you are looking for some resources to support a patient, a friend, a relative or yourself with an eating disorder the RCPsych have a great section here https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/members/your-faculties/eating-disorders-psychiatry

There's also NICE CKS https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/eating-disorders/

The RCGP have an elearning module here: https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/info.php?id=173

we also recommend the national eating disorders charity BEAT https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

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.

Follow Ana on Twitter https://twitter.com/alwaddington

The RCPCH response to the current situation around access to gender affirming therapy/support for young people is a really helpful starting point:
https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/news/rcpch-statement-ruling-judicial-review-bell-v-tavistock

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

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 non 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.

Follow Catriona on twitter here: https://twitter.com/catrionadavis

We also mentioned the book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/empire-of-pain-the-secret-history-of-the-sackler-dynasty-patrick-radden-keefe/6452138?ean=9781529063103 and the Disney+ series Dopesick - there's a fabulous episode of the Boggleddocs podcast all about this one: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1300702/12482048-dopesick-how-we-ve-all-been-sucked-in-to-the-opiate-crisis

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.

Bridget and I mention Cariad's podcast, Griefcast which can be found here: https://cariadlloyd.com/griefcast

Follow Cariad on twitter here: https://twitter.com/ladycariad

and find Bridget here https://twitter.com/bhargreave

I'm joined this week by Victoria Kinkaid, military doctor, women's health enthusiast, feminist and host of the Virago Voices podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/virago-voices/id1518617892

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.

Victoria and I also mention briefly Christina Lamb's stunning book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield which we'd also both read recently and which complements Half the Sky brilliantly (Guardian review here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/08/our-bodies-their-battlefield-christina-lamb-review-women-war-rape-victims)

Follow Victoria on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/vkinkaid11

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/

find her brilliant instagram page here https://www.instagram.com/mixing.up.motherhood

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.

Follow Kate on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/KateWharton27

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.

follow Kirsty on twitter https://twitter.com/shireskirsty

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.

Follow Gary on Twitter https://mobile.twitter.com/smilerturner

We mentioned a number of useful resources around the topic of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy CTE

https://concussionfoundation.org/
https://headforchange.org.uk/

'Concussion', starring Will Smith, real life story of Bennett Omalu discovering CTE in American Football Players, and the NFL attempt to cover it up

More Books:
League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth: Amazon.co.uk: Fainaru-Wada, Mark, Fainaru, Steve: 9780770437565: Books

A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice : Walker-Brown, Hana: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Concussion and Traumatic Encephalopathy - Victoroff and Bigler, the best text book on the subject of brain injuries in sport Concussion and Traumatic Encephalopathy: Causes, Diagnosis and Management: Amazon.co.uk: Victoroff, Jeff, Bigler, Erin D.: 9781107073951: Books

Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing (Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Prize) : Dixon, Tris: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Gary also recommends a selection of papers - too many to list here which can be found by following this google drive link if you are interested:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E3G7eDD1yPTA3aTWXGD95i11XTdgCpfPNG12kfkNtkE/edit?usp=sharing

League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth

None

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.

Sue Start Smith the author is a writer and psychotherapist https://www.suestuartsmith.com/
https://twitter.com/suestuartsmith

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.

Follow Benjamin on Twitter here https://twitter.com/BenjamBlack

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.

Welcome to Series 4 of Bedside Reading

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.

Follow Kathryn on Twitter here https://twitter.com/drkathrynmannix

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

https://www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/

https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/

https://dasd.org.uk domestic abuse support specifically for doctors run by Dr Kathryn Hayman

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-help

https://www.mankind.org.uk/

https://galop.org.uk/

Emma specifically recommends the book Why does he do that? by Lundy Bancroft https://lundybancroft.com/

Joanna Nadin's The Queen of Bloody Everything, is about mothers, daughters and how we can make many choices in life but can't choose where we come from.

As Edie Jones lies in a bed on the fourteenth floor of a Cambridge hospital, her adult daughter Dido tells their story, starting with the day that changed everything. That was the day Dido - aged exactly six years and twenty-seven days old - met the next door neighbours and fell in love. Because the Trevelyans were exactly the kind of family Dido dreamed of. Normal.

This book sucked me in from the start and it was so brilliant to talk to Lizz Lidbury about it. There's so much in this book: young carers, alcoholism, coercive control, what is a family? and so so much more.

We talked about this article https://srh.bmj.com/content/45/1/61.abstract about reproductive control

Lizz also recommended the wonderful book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

A young man has stopped breathing in a supermarket toilet. A pedestrian with a nasty head injury won’t let the crew near him on a busy road. A newborn baby is worryingly silent. An addict urinates on the ambulance floor when denied a fix.This is the life of an NHS ambulance paramedic.

Jake Jones has worked in the UK ambulance service for ten years: every day, he sees a dozen of the scenes we hope to see only once in a lifetime. Can You Hear Me? – the first thing he says when he arrives on the scene – is a memoir of the chaos, intensity and occasional beauty of life on the front-lines of medicine in the UK.

As well as a look into dozens of extraordinary scenes – the hoarder who won’t move his collection to let his ailing father leave the house, the blood-soaked man who tries to escape from the ambulance, the life saved by a lucky crew who had been called to see someone else entirely – Can You Hear Me? is an honest examination of the strains and challenges of one of the most demanding and important jobs anyone can do.

It was such a pleasure and privilege to meet Jake and talk to him as a guest and writer on the podcast

I'm so delighted that Kathleen Wenaden asked to come and talk about the beautiful, gentle evocative book with me because this has been one of my reading highlights in the past few weeks.

This is a wonderful gentle record of a small world, centred around a small terraced house in the West Midlands and the diary of a year in the life of an invisible illness.

The Guardian review of this book hints just slightly at the possibilities within https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/27/a-still-life-by-josie-george-review-memoir-of-a-mystery-illness.

Kathleen and I talk about the fallacy of binary illness-wellness which made us reflect on another book Recovery by Gavin Francis

Follow writer Josie George here https://twitter.com/porridgebrain

Follow Kathleen here https://twitter.com/kathleenwenade1

It was a really pleasure to talk to GP and writer Sophie Harrison about her book The Cure for Good Intentions which was a BBC Radio 4 book of the week back in May 2022 and which is a fabulous insight into the storytelling world of medicine. We talk about crossing over from arts to sciences and how the art of medicine and the storytelling is the most joyous part of what we do.

Follow Sophie on twitter here https://twitter.com/sophharrison

Maggie O'Farrell is one of my favourite writers and it was such a pleasure to reread her memoir I am I am I am for todays episode when I'm discussing it with Sally Davies.

We talk about where we read (in the lift at work anyone?!), what we read and why reading is so valuable to us both. We also explore the risk-taking decisions of young brains, how common near death experiences are, how experiences shape the person we are now and how defensive we are primed to be about the NHS when sometimes care is indefensible.

Follow Sally on Twitter here: https://mobile.twitter.com/sally_bobs

Set Boundaries, Find Peace had a title which both intrigued and slightly scared me. The author Nedra Glover Tawab is something of an instagram sensation, for very good reason. It was brilliant to connect with Aukland Nurse Educator, Erin Carn-Bennett to discuss boundaries and why health professionals are often so bad at them. If you are thinking about a New Year new you type of an approach this book might just be what you need.

Follow Erin on Twitter here: https://mobile.twitter.com/erincarnbennett

Follow Nedra on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/nedratawwab/?hl=en

It's a funny time of year, one of endings and beginnings and what better way to mark the end of 2022 than to have some friends of the podcast, old and new to review their favourite books of 2022 and think about some to-read ideas for 2023. Nine healthcare professional guests and I share some highlights and anticipated reads.

A huge thank you to

Pim Dhahan https://twitter.com/DrPimPim who recommended Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and is looking forward to some new Stephen King

Becky Platt https://twitter.com/BeckyPlatt3 who recommended The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman and is looking forward to reading Tornado of Life by Jay Baruch

Vicky Thomas https://twitter.com/LittleDoctorVic who recommended Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Austin O'Carroll https://twitter.com/austinoc_austin who recommended Tresspasses by Louise Kennedy and is looking forward to reading The Unfit Heiress by Audrey Farley

Anna Young https://twitter.com/annanursesheff who recommended Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan and is looking forward to Raynor Wynn's third book Landlines

Sabina Dosani https://twitter.com/DrSabinaDosani who recommended a collection of poems called Ovarium by Joanna Ingham and is looking forward to Getting Better by Michael Rosen in 2023

Dave Hindmarsh https://twitter.com/gp_templates who recommended The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle and is anticipating The Second Mountain by David Brooks

Rema Jyothirmayi https://twitter.com/remajyothirmayi who recommended Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese and is looking forward to reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Nicola Davis https://twitter.com/drnicoladavis who recommended Still Life by Sarah Winman her most anticipated read for 2023 is Getting Better by Michael Rosen

for their thoughts and reflections.

I'm delighted to welcome back an old friend of the podcast, Catriona Davis to talk about a real classic ghost story - Henry James' The Turn of the Screw which starts on Christmas Eve and is the ideal short novella if you want a creepy, dark, ghost story for a cold dark night.

We talk about unreliable narrators, "spider sense" and how we get into trouble because we don't listen to the little voice telling us it's all going to go horribly wrong. We also think about how to talk to children in an age appropriate way about sex and why learning correct anatomical terms is really important.

Follow Catriona on twitter https://twitter.com/catrionadavis

Catriona and I talk about some books we are desperately hoping to get for Christmas and a special mention to my favourite bookshop in the world: Scarthin Books in Matlock http://www.scarthinbooks.com/ who also have a brilliant mail order service if you can't make it there in person https://scarthinbooksonline.com/ as well as a presence on bookshop.org https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/scarthinbooks

Ingrid Persaud's debut novel Love After Love blew me away the first time I read it in 2020 shortly after it was published. Re-reading it recently for this podcast has made me love it even more.

The title of this novel is from the Derek Walcott poem Love After Love - find it here https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love it is also so moving and thought provoking.

Anita and I talk about the importance of loving reading, of escaping via the pages of a novel. Love After Love, set in Trinidad and following a very unconventional family is a brilliant book in which to escape the winter blues and find yourself in the Caribbean.

Among other things there are themes of secrets, unconventional families, different types of love, migration, belonging, self harm, homophobia and expectations.

"It’s the summer of 1935, and young Briony sees her older sister Cecilia plunge nearly naked into the fountain of their country house, while Robbie Turner, the housekeeper’s son, is watching. From that moment, their lives will never be the same. Atonement is the tragically compelling story of two lovers fallen victims of a young girl’s scheming imagination, and a dreadful crime for which Briony will attempt to atone for the rest of her life."

I loved talking to Orthopaedic Surgeon Derek Ochiai about Ian McEwan's haunting novel Atonement.We had a wonderful conversation around class, time, trusting narrators, the impossibility of truth, why we rather wish social media could be wiped clean on reaching the age of 18 and how in war the rules all disappear.

Follow Derek on Twitter here https://twitter.com/DrDerekOchiai

*SPOILER ALERT* We tried hard to keep the twist a secret here but then Rahhiel got a bit carried away and mentioned a little part of it and then we kept talking and it was too hard to go back and decide to record this all over again. So if you've not read this incredible book and are adamant you'd want absolutely no spoilers at all, you might need to read it first. If you've read it already or if you hate surprises anyway keep listening.

Christy Lefteri's bestselling novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo captivated me from the moment i picked it up. I was transported to Syria, through Turkey, Greece to the south coast of England. It is a beautiful story told in the voice of Nuri the beekeeper and narrates the journey he takes with his wife Afra to leave their beloved home to find a safer life.

The Trailblazer fellowship programme is well worth looking at https://heeoe.hee.nhs.uk/general_practice/fellowships-primary-care/trailblazer-deprivation-fellowships

The organisation Doctors of the World produce som amazing resources for working with refugees https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/

The difficulties Afra and Nuri face when registering with a GP could have been avoided if only their practice knew about this guidance
https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/gps/how-to-register-with-a-gp-surgery/

Linking again to the phenomenal Fairhealth resources and their courses on health inequalities
https://www.fairhealth.org.uk/courses

This week's book choice is the newest novel by prolific American writer Kristin Hannah. Set in the dust bowl of the USA in the 1930s it's historical fiction covering a time period my guest, Kathryn Oliver, and I knew little of before we picked it up. We'd initially read this novel as part of a HEE educator book club and I admit that having been blown away by earlier novels by Kristin Hannah (most particularly The Great Alone and The Nightingale this wasn't right up there as a favourite of her books for me.

Then we got chatting.... There is SO much in this story. Poverty, hope, aspiration, expectations, the role of women in the early 20th century, putting your children first, moving for a better life (refugees vs economic migrants anyone?)

Naveen Jayadev is a GP in North Derbyshire and a Training Programme Director for the Chesterfield and Derbyshire Dales GP Training Programme with a specialist interest in Differential Attainment. He was born and educated in India. We got together to talk about How India Works a book which might not initially seem relevant to medicine, written by a corporate trainer from an Indian financial services background.... Listen on, it's totally relevant.

This is a fascinating window into Indian Culture and has very much helped me to think more about Differential Attainment, cultural competence and why it's not good enough as a trainer/educator to assume we can help IMG doctors to understand British Culture and nuance without making an effort to understand where they are coming from.

Naveen also mentioned:
Watching the English by Kate Fox which is often recommended by NHS England

This novel by Elif Shafak is undoubtedly my top read of 2022 and so it was a delight to be approached by Sabina Dosani to discuss it. We talk about intergenerational trauma, adolescent norms, loss, escapism and much more.

There's a theme of roots, of secrets, things buried and things left unsaid. It's a sensational novel and one I am so glad to have read.

Follow her on twitter here https://twitter.com/DrSabinaDosani

It felt like a very weird role reversal being the host with Nik Kendrew, host of the wonderful Boggleddocs podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/1300702, as my guest.

We were both shocked and surprised by how much we learned from Emma Barnett's brilliant book when we'd both considered ourselves to be GPs who were pretty OK at women's health. This brilliantly accessible book has made both of us think, gasp, laugh and cry and we thought it should be essential reading for everyone (not just healthcare professionals)

Follow Nik on Twitter here https://twitter.com/nikkendrew

Rebecca Schiller's memoir Earthed was described by today's guest, Anna Young, as "like a car crash told in prose poetry". This is a beautiful book, in places not an easy read and one in which we both acknowledge that we "missed" the (in retrospect obvious) diagnosis in spite of thinking we were pretty good at our jobs in primary care.

We talk about the healing power of nature, the importance of support and networks, and neurodiversity in a neurotypical world.

October is ADHD awareness month https://www.adhdawarenessmonth.org/ so it was lovely to be able to mark that on the podcast with this episode

Follow Anna on Twitter https://twitter.com/annanursesheff

It was an honour and a pleasure to record today's episode with one of the most engaging, gracious and thoughtful people I've met. Liz O'Riordan, writer, speaker, campaigner, breast cancer patient and breast surgeon. When I joined Twitter Liz O'Riordan quickly became someone I was aware of and fascinated to follow. She is a #medtwitter hero and an incredible role model.

We talk about her breast cancer, and its effect on her and on her career. How no matter how good a breast cancer doctor she was, she had little clue what it would actually be like to have breast cancer. We discuss the book she wrote with fellow doctor/breast cancer patient Prof Trish Greenhalgh, how academic writing bears little resemblance to the writing people/patients would actually want to read.

We also talk about her new book, mental health stigma in medicine and so much more.

Liz's website is here:
https://liz.oriordan.co.uk/

She has incredibly generously offered podcast listeners a discount on her new book using the code BEDSIDE10 for 10% off until midnight 19 Dec 2022
https://unbound.com/books/under-the-knife

Follow Liz on Twitter https://twitter.com/Liz_ORiordan

Could this be one of the most devastatingly beautiful books I've ever read? A rollercoaster of emotions from hope to despair and back again. A love story about a woman who is fatally flawed, doing her best, loving and losing and a small boy whose world in 1980s Glasgow is bright vividly to life in Douglas Stuart's wonderful first novel.

Helen Blomfield was the perfect guest to explore this novel with. An Occupational Therapist ACP (my first OT guest) working in Primary Care with a deep interest in health inequalities Helen also has the family connection of being the daughter in law of photographer Robert Blomfield who captured many images reminiscent of the cover photo and scenes within this novel.
We talked a little about the exhibition of his photos which you can see here: https://www.robertblomfield.co.uk/

Follow Helen on Twitter https://twitter.com/helenblomfield8

If you are interested in health inequalities the charity Fairhealth have some superb resources and learning modules here https://www.fairhealth.org.uk/

The memoir of the little girl in the photo Helen mentions is https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2983372-what-daddy-did

RESOURCES FOR SUPPORTING YOUNG CARERS

https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/supporting-young-carers

https://www.carersuk.org/help-and-advice/practical-support/getting-care-and-support/young-carers-and-carers-of-children-under-18

https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/our-work-and-impact/children-and-families/young-carers/

We also discussed Deborah Orr's wonderful memoir Motherwell https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/08/motherwell-a-girlhood-deborah-orr-review

Absolutely brilliant to talk to Jay Baruch about his fabulous book Tornado of Life. We talk about making time for stories, narrative arcs and why uncertainty is the most fascinating part of everything we do. Exploring the concept of creativity as a clinical skill and discussing the anatomy of stories was all part of our fabulous conversation, I hope you'll enjoy it

Follow Jay on twitter here https://twitter.com/JBaruchMD

I really loved my conversation with Associate Professor of mental health and self confessed "book pusher" Charley Baker about Eleanor Oliphant Gail Honeyman's wonderful novel about loneliness, friendship, belonging and acceptance.

We explore Charley's opinion that novels are by far the best way for everyone to explore feelings and opinions and I left our conversation with lots of other books to add to me to-read list.

Follow Charley on Twitter here https://twitter.com/charleybaker1

LONELINESS RESOURCEShttps://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/resources-2/

https://www.marmaladetrust.org/

It was a huge honour to have this book and this guest to launch series 3. I was approached by Ru's publicist to ask if I might consider speaking to him and was sent my first ever pre-publication copy of a book. What an absolute treat the book was, I absolutely adored it and speaking to Ru himself was just a delight.

When he became an undertaker, Rupert Callender undertook to deal with the dead for the sake of the living. What Remains? is the brilliant, unforgettable story of the life and work of the world's first punk undertaker - but it is also a book about ordinary, everyday humanity and our capacity to face death with courage and compassion. To say goodbye to the people we love in our own way.

And in becoming the world's first 'punk undertaker' and establishing the Green Funeral Company in Devon, Ru Callender and his partner Claire challenged the stilted, traditional, structured world of the funeral industry: fusing what he had learned from his own deeply personal experiences with death, with the surprising and profound answers and raw emotion he discovered in rave culture and ritual magick.

Watching Brene Brown's "power of vulnerability" TED talk was a life changing moment for me as a clinician and when I started reading more of her work I was blown away. I didn't think there could be a book of hers as good as "Daring Greatly", I was wrong. Atlas of the Heart is such a beautiful book in the way it looks, it feels, the illustrations and oh my word the content within.

It was such a treat to discover that Anna Baverstock had loved it as much as I had. We talk about language, meaning, connection, empathy and so much more. Something to reflect on in terms of interactions with patients as well as colleagues.

Follow Anna on twitter here: https://twitter.com/anna_annabav especially her amazing doodles and pictoral representations of the books she's been reading

Sam Guglani's novella Histories captivated me from the moment I picked it up and having reread it more than once has compelled me and made me think so much. It was a huge treat to welcome him onto the podcast to talk about the book and especially how it came to be and to share some of our favourite moments.

Medicine Unboxed Sam's incredible festival is back in May 2023, have a look at the website for some brilliant audio and video recordings from previous events https://voices.medicineunboxed.org/

Follow Sam on Twitter https://twitter.com/samirguglani

A warm welcome to Manchester based GP registrar Lava Yuki who grew up in Ireland and is an almost exact contemporary of the writer of this week's book. Evanna Lynch is best known for playing Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter film series and her memoir The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting is a compelling story of what happens when you lose your creativity and how Anorexia Nervosa can erode someone's identity so profoundly that they lose sight of themselves. It is also moving, funny, engaging and full of life and hope.

Lava very generously shares some of her own lived experience of Anorexia as well as of being a Harry Potter mad teenager and growing up in Ireland in the early 2000s.

Follow Lava on twitter: https://twitter.com/lava_yuki

If you are looking for some resources to support a patient, a friend, a relative or yourself with an eating disorder the RCPsych have a great section here https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/members/your-faculties/eating-disorders-psychiatry

There's also NICE CKS https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/eating-disorders/

The RCGP have an elearning module here: https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/info.php?id=173

we also recommend the national eating disorders charity BEAT https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

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/

My guest today is MedTwitter royalty in the form of Bethan John. Follow her brilliant twitter self here: https://twitter.com/msbethanj

We talk about Kristen Neff's brilliant book Self Compassion and why doctors seem somehow so hardwired to be perfectionists who put themselves down at every opportunity.

It was a huge pleasure to welcome Dave Hindmarsh to Bedside Reading to discuss The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. Dave is the brains behind GP Templates: https://www.gptemplates.co.uk/

Follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/gp_templates

We talked about healthy vs unhealthy cultures, why it's sometimes easier to recognise bad leadership than practise or teach good leadership.

We talked about the RCGP Veteran Friendly Programme https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=12533

Dave also mentioned

The Warrior Programme - https://www.warriorprogramme.org.uk/

Sheffield GP Jo Maher and I know so many people in common that it felt only right that we should finally meet in person in order to record today's episode where we explore Helen Macdonald's essay collection Vesper Flights as well as talking a bit about her earlier book H is for Hawk.Jo and I explore the power of nature, why being outside is so good for the soul and think about the risks of the countryside and the natural world becoming the preserve of the wealthy rather than something for us all.

Follow Jo on twitter http://www.twitter.com/jomaher8

An episode with a difference this week as we celebrate changeover week for doctors in training in the UK.

I've asked 12 GPs across the UK all with different backgrounds and interests each to recommend one book they think every GP should read. I'd argue they are all books any healthcare professional could do wth reading. A huge thank you to each and every one of them for being a part of this episode. You may recognise some voices as previous guests, you may recognise some names as big faces from medtwitter or the wider world of GP

A huge thanks to:

Pim Dhahan GP, Trainer and TPD from North Birmingham Follow Pim on twitterhere:https://twitter.com/DrPimPim

Margaret Ikpoh GP Trainer East Yorkshire and Vice Chair of the RCGP. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/docmagsy

Hussain Ghandi GP Partner, trainerand the brains behind https://egplearning.co.uk/Follow him on twitterhttps://twitter.com/drgandalf

Francesca Boffey First 5 GP from North Derbyshire.

Dom Patterson GP, educator and founder of https://www.fairhealth.org.uk . Follow him on twitter https://twitter.com/DocDomP

Selina Flinders GP and safeguarding lead in Bolsover.

Catriona Davis a remote and rural GP who works on Islay.Follow her on twitter herehttps://twitter.com/catrionadavis

Naveen Jayadev GP partner, trainer and TPD with a lead role for Differential Attainment in Derbyshire.

Emma Cunliffe a freelance GP from North Yorkshire.

Zuhriya Muazu salaried GP from Doncaster.

James Thambyrajah GP, Vice-Chair RCGP South West Thames faculty. Follow James on twitter https://twitter.com/JThambyrajah

I am so thrilled to welcome Rema Jyothirmayi back to Bedside Reading to talk about Kathryn Mannix's wonderful second book Listen.
We loved exploring the etymology of the word "tender" and why Dr Mannix might have chosen this to describe tender conversations. Rema and I loved this book and it was wonderful to share a conversation about it in which we realised that some of the same stories had leaped out for both of us. We explore the power of stories to change our behaviour.

This is truly a book for everyone, regardless of whether they are a healthcare professional. If you listen better, especially if you can listen well you will never regret it in any scenario.

Follow Rema on twitter: https://twitter.com/RemaJyothirmayi

We also talk briefly about the poem "Night Sister" by Elizabeth Jennings which can be found here https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/night-sister/

What an absolute treat and privilege it was to speak to Dr Suzanne Koven http://suzannekoven.com/ about her incredible book Letter to a Young Female Physician.

I thought we would talk about imposter syndrome and women in medicine but actually we had a truly fantastic conversation about all sorts of other topics especially the power of stories to connect, the fact that doctors must be human first and then medical. We explore honesty, coming to writing later in life and the value of acknowledging our own doubts, foibles and vulnerabilities.

This book is an absolute gem. Undoubtedly one I shall recommend and pass on to multiple other (particularly but not exclusively female) doctors .

What a joy to be back talking to Ed Pooley again, this time about the wonderful Counselling for Toads. We talk about anthropomorphised animals as a safe way to explore feelings, transactional analysis, the role of therapy and so much more.

follow Ed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dr_edwardpooley

His brilliant facebook community can be found here for many live (and on demand) videos around human communication can be found here
https://www.facebook.com/groups/237884610488751

Ed also recommended:
Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner
The Games People Play by Eric Berne

For more about the Drama Triangle I especially like this short youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovrVv_RlCMw

Bolsover GP Dr Selina Flinders joins Tara this week to talk about Sir Michael Marmot's brilliant The Health Gap. We talk about health inequalities, the effect of the pandemic and how much more relevant this book sadly is in our post-Covid world. We go on to talk about poverty, intergenerational medicine, the role of the GP as a listener and how the Beveridge report remains just as relevant 80 years later.

This is such an important book, it's also readable, accessible and thought provoking without being hard work or boring. It's relevant to anyone working in healthcare and to be honest we think it's relevant to anyone who is interested in anything.

We also talked about Julian Tudor-Hart's Inverse Care Law
If you want a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5zvzKcFHj8

Selina also recommended Kristin Hannah's novel The Four Winds and how the themes in that fit with everything Marmot has to say. We also mentioned Cecil Helman's classic book The Suburban Shaman

Paediatrician Natalie Francis and I had a great time discussing Jo Browning-Wroe's wonderful novel A Terrible Kindness. We talk about stigma, PTSD, defence mechanisms, love, jealousy, homophobia and so much more. Find Natalie on twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/natalie_francis

This novel starts with the story of a young embalmer who travels to Aberfan, following the call to attend to assist with the rescue and preparation of the bodies of children after the disaster. Jo Browning-Wroe's article in the Nw Statesman here https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2016/10/unsung-heroes-aberfan is an introduction and background to the work they did and what William may have experienced.

This is a sensational debut novel but one which did have me weeping in places

A very very special episode this week as Nicola Davis and I explore our best bits from the incredible dotMD festival in Galway which we attended this weekend. This episode was recorded live at dotMD after a phenomenal 2 days of listening, thinking, reflecting, dancing and eating.

Follow Nicola on twitter: https://twitter.com/drnicoladavis

The festival website is here http://dotmd.ie (sign up to get information about when they release tickets for 2023) their twitter feed is here: https://twitter.com/DotMDConf

We discussed many wonderful people and their talks and books, sorry to anyone we have missed mentioning by name here, we only had 33 minutes but we could have talked for hours!!!

Here's our combined post conference reading list (to be honest we had to hold back but this is the list we discuss in the episode):

Letter to a Young Female Physician by Suzanne Koven (Tara has recorded a podcast episode with her which will be coming up very soon too!) https://twitter.com/suzannekovenmd and her website http://suzannekoven.com/book/

Understanding the path to mastery by Roger Kneebone (he also has a wonderful podcast called "Countercurrent" which can be found here https://rogerkneebone.libsyn.com/

A Life in Trauma by Chris Luke https://twitter.com/DrChrisLukeCork

After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth https://twitter.com/emjaneunsworth

Dr Quin, Medicine Man by John Quin https://twitter.com/jdmquin

How not to be a Doctor by John Launer https://johnlauner.com/ and https://twitter.com/JohnLauner

Conversations Inviting Change has a website here where you can learn more about this brilliant model and sign up for courses https://www.conversationsinvitingchange.com/

Monica Lalanda was the incredible artist in residence her cartons can be seen on the dotMD social media pages, follow her here https://twitter.com/mlalanda

Vital Signs - Martin Dyer due out later in the year which contains this wonderful poem Ter Conatus by Bernard O'Donoghue https://poetryarchive.org/poem/ter-conatus/

Benji Waterhouse's book will be out in 2023 and is very much on my list his website is here so you can keep a look out for it when it's released https://www.benjiwaterstones.com/about

This week I'm joined by Ralph Emmerson, a GP, GP trainer and self confessed "Shackleton nerd" to talk about Alfred Lansing's 1950s record of the ill fated expedition to the pole led by Shackleton Endurance. It's a story that transcends time and has so much to offer when you reflect on the attributes of leadership that we need in crisis. When we reflect on the Covid 19 pandemic, the loss of the traditional roles and rules and the ethics and morality of "doing what seems right in the circumstances" and how simply surviving is often the greatest miracle this book really comes into its own. It's an adventure story, there's an ending we perhaps all know already but undoubtedly there's a human miracle story in there for us all.

TRIGGER WARNING: early in the episode we talk about a termination for medical reasons of a much wanted pregnancy and there is discussion of another bereavement.

Susan Mathew and I discuss Mo Gawdat's Solve for Happy and explore the happiness equation. Among other things we explore whether the right self help book at the wrong time can be a thing, lessons we have both learned from this book and whether recommending bibliotherapy books to patients is something we should be doing more often.

We talk about totems, happy lists, time out and little strategies we can implement in our day to day lives to boost happiness

Susan also refers to the brilliant book The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters which can be found here https://chimpmanagement.com/books-by-professor-steve-peters/the-chimp-paradox/

Brilliant to be joined again by Naren Senthil Nathan this time to talk about Lucy Kellaway's wonderful story of " how I changed by job, my home, my husband and my hair". We talk about life stages, expectations, the power of education and the fact that retiring at 60 does not work well with the life expectancy and lifestyles of the 21 century.

As a GP trainer I found the ideas around "unlearning" old career habits before being able to learn new skills a really powerful concept.

John Boyne's novel The Heart's Invisible Furieshas one of the most powerful opening chapters of anything I've ever read. It has stayed with me and is an extract I've used in teaching a variety of times always with excellent results. It was a joy to find someone else who'd loved the book too in the form of Bedside Reading's first pharmacist guest, Kerry Parry.

We talk about snapshots into peoples lives, the changes of the 20th and 21st centuries, the AIDS crisis, shame, stigma and so much more.

What a treat this week to welcome author and retired GP Malcolm Alexander to Beside Reading to talk about his wonderful book Close to where the heart gives out which is one of my top reads of 2022 so far.

We talk about his experiences as a remote and rural GP, the ultimate arch nemesis that was a pair of Wrigley's forceps, the process of writing, doctors as patient, confidentiality and so much more

I'm delighted to be joined by London GP and podcast fanatic James Thambirajah to discuss Dean Burnett's book Psychological. James and I explore the importance of being able to explain complex medical concepts in lay language and think about the power of bibliography to help patients and especially relatives to gain an understanding of mental illness.

I'm not sure that GPs are the natural designed audience for this book but that doesn't mean we didn't both gain a lot from it and it's certainly one I'll be adding to my list of resources for patients and relatives.

What a treat to be joined by a member of #medtwitter royalty. Ben Lovell and I had such a great discussion starting from Kristen Johnston's memoir Guts. We talk about whether being nosy is a prerequisite for being a good doctor (yes), how we treat addicts in the NHS (often badly), why as HCPs working in a visibly flawed system we are so conditioned to be defensive of the NHS even when it is failing.

This book is a fantastic, raw and open insight into the lies people tell themselves when they are functioning addicts, what it might take to mean they may make a decision to change (top tip, it's not what doctors say to them) and a observational portrait of the NHS from the perspective of an American. It is funny, tough and insightful and I can guarantee reading it will make you a better clincian

Welcome back and welcome to Season 2. So exciting to have you back listening to us. I absolutely loved recording this episode with Emma Pickett IBCLC talking about Room by Emma Donoghue. We talk about attachment, infant feeding, breastfeeding older children, toddler manners and more.

SOME USEFUL RESOURCES

Association of Breastfeeding Mothers
https://abm.me.uk/

GP Infant Feeding Network
https://gpifn.org.uk/

Breastfeeding for Doctors
https://www.paediatricfoam.com/2018/09/breastfeeding-for-doctors-101-part-1/

Breastfeeding Helplinehttps://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/

We offer breastfeeding support on the phone, every day of the year, 9.30am to 9.30pm. Call Charges to all helplines apply. Calls to 0300 numbers cost no more than calls to UK numbers starting 01 and 02 and will be part of any inclusive minutes that apply to your provider and call package.

National Breastfeeding Helpline: 0300 100 0212
The National Breastfeeding Helpline is a helpline run in collaboration with the Breastfeeding Network (BfN) and the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers (ABM). All the volunteers answering calls are mums who have breastfed, and all have received extensive training in breastfeeding support. Calls are diverted to the next available ABM or BfN volunteer. The Helpline is funded by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the Scottish Government.

Support is also available in Welsh and Polish via the National Breastfeeding Helpline – call 0300 100 0212 and press 1 for Welsh and 2 for Polish.

Discount on Emma's new book: Supporting Breastfeeding Past the First Six Months and Beyondif you use this link direct from the publisher
https://uk.jkp.com/products/supporting-breastfeeding-past-the-first-six-months-and-beyond?_pos=1&_sid=26bd70c70&_ss=r
and use BSREP15% for 15% off the publisher's price

It's the end of series 1 and today's episode is a flipped one where Ed Pooley is interviewing me about Malcolm Gladwell's talking to strangers. This audio recording was originally a videocast as part of Ed's phenomenal Facebook educational group "Difficult Conversations: Understanding Communication & Psychology in Health" which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/237884610488751

Ed and I talk about connection, the TV show Friends, historical events, assumptions, fallacies and what it is to be human.

This conversation was the final push I needed to start Bedside Reading and it is so lovely to be able to share this with you, my listeners as we close the first series for a little Easter Break

Join Tara and Kate Smith, A GP in Oxfordshire as we talk about the book that changed Kate's career: Stuart a Life Backwards by Alexander Masters

If you are interested in Homelessness Kate has kindly drawn up a huge list of resources for further reading/watching

Fiction

Even the Dogs by Jon Macgregor

How to find a home by Mahsuda Snaith

Biography

Four Feet Under by Tamsen Courtenay

Autobiography

Pavement for my pillow by Chris Kitch

From the Inside: Life in a Women’s Prison- by the Charity Worker who should never have been there by Ruth Wyner

Down and Out in London and Paris, by George Orwell

Writing projects

We are here – Stories if Home, Place and Belonging ( www.homelesswriting.org )

www.haveawordwithyourself.co.uk

www.outofhome.org.uk (photography project employing homeless photographers to document their experience during Lockdown)

www.thepavement.org.uk

homeless organisations (those mentioned in the book specifically)

https://wintercomfort.org.uk

Willow Walk Cambridge | Help for people who are homeless (riverside.org.uk)

Emmaus UK | the charity working to end homelessness

Muscular Dystrophy

Muscular Dystrophy UK | Muscular Dystrophy UK

Tara was excited this week to talk to another Tara who loves books almost as much as she does! Tara McCormack is an Emergency Department Nurse in Sydney and part of the https://dontforgetthebubbles.com community.

We discovered our shared enjoyment of this book as part of an online book group and there's literally so much to talk about. We talked about carers, about narratives, effective communication and so much more. Some resources below may help if you want to know more.

https://carers.org/about-caring/about-young-carers

https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/supporting-young-carers

https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/communicating-clearly/

In honour of world poetry day on 21st March, in a slight change to the format this week I'm delighted to welcome Dr Vicky Thomas (aka @LittleDoctorVic on Twitter) to talk about some of her poems, published and unpublished. We talk about writing as therapy, about clinical supervision and how it's almost impossible to be a doctor and not be political.

Some of Vicky's poems are published in the NHS anthology These are the hands https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/these-are-the-hands and in Night Feeds and Morning Songs which was discussed on this podcast back in December 2021.

Another pandemic, 104 years before I met Jenny Slough to talk about it but the parallels with 1918 Dublin and 2020/21 London are uncannily familiar. We talk about Emma Donoghue's brilliant Novel The Pull of the Stars and find shared comfort in remembering that pandemics whilst usually once in a lifetime are events which have happened before and history allows us to start to feel reassured there will be an after.

Jenny's own experiences of redeployment which we touch on in this episode are beautifully and thoughtfully explored here in an NHS living well podcast: https://keepingwellncl.nhs.uk/podcast/in-conversation-with-jenny-family-liaison/

It's International Women's day, in a special episode to mark the occasion catch Tara talking to GP Registrar Eleanor Love about Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez

We talk about the gender data gap and the possible impact on health outcomes as well as discrimination (overt and indirect), sexism, feminism and how recognising and acting on gender bias and moving away from the "default male" actually makes the world fairer for everyone.

What a treat it was to talk to Ani Gavrilovic about what must be one of the most moving, and thought provoking novels I have ever read. Maylis de Kerangal's Mend the Living is the story of 24 hours in the heart of 19 year old Simon Limbeau. It is a story of death and life, of organ transplants and human stories, of a day from many different perspectives. It is a story of love and hope as well as loss and darkness.

Organ Donation UKhttps://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/

https://orgamites.com/ this is a brilliant resource for assisting with conversations with primary school aged children about organ donation

Join Tara this week as she talks to Mahima Chandrasekar about the powerful love story of the NHS and its neonatal care that is Francesca Segal's phenomenal memoir Mothership.

We talk about the alien spaceship world of the NICU, how if we are scared as doctors it must be terrifying as a parent. We think about language, how relatives are horribly diminished is we call them "mum" rather than their real names. We think about camaraderie, support networks, love, compassion, hope and wonder.

This is a stunning book. Our first discussion/review was published as a DFTB book review in summer 2021: https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/mother-ship-by-francesca-segal/

We had so much more to say about it this time round!!! It is a book full of life, love, hope, fear and one which has undoubtedly changed both our practice significantly and positively forever.

Francesca Segal has her own podcast which is all about prematurity and can be found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mother-ship-a-podcast-about-prematurity/id1500789844

It's Valentines Day this week and in celebration we have a love story on the podcast today. This isn't a traditional schmaltzy love story though, The Salt Path is a stunning love letter, the record of a long walk and features the sort of love story most of us will never be lucky enough to experience. Tara is joined by Pim Dahan to talk about love, homelessness, the power of nature and the importance of slowing down.

When Raynor Winn and her husband became homeless and he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, they packed their rucksacks and began walking the South West Coast Path. She tells her extraordinary story of prejudice, hidden communities and finding home

RESOURCES FROM TODAY'S EPISODE

Rural Homelessness
https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/rural-england-homeless-problem-hidden/
Raynor Winn writing in the Big Issue about rural homelessness

Shelter
https://www.shelter.org.uk/

NHS England Guidance on Social Prescribing
https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/

Men's Sheds
https://menssheds.org.uk/

Grounding Techniqueshttps://togetherinmind.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TSC-Posters_Grounding-Techniques.pdf

Join Tara George and Trisha Cantley as they talk about Ben Watt's memoir Patient. Yes it is that Ben Watt from "Everything But The Girl". This is the at times terrifying story of a mystery illness which results in a young man having a near death experience and a prolonged and terrifying hospital stay. We talk about our experiences of hospitals as doctors rather than patients, about the vulnerability of being ill, the effect of illness on relationships, what hospitals are good at and what they aren't. We also thought a lot about the value of book clubs (Trisha is involved with the wonderful #geribookclub on twitter) and how we read - "real" books vs e-books vs audible and the pros and cons of all of these.

Join Tara as she talks to Ripon Ahmed about Sunjeev Sahota's phenomenal novel "The Year of the Runaways". This is a wonderful book and we had such a brilliant discussion about migration, generational changes, aspiration, survival, access to healthcare, attitudes to mental illness, homelessness, families, caste, class and discrimination among many many other things. The Year of the Runaways is a superb exploration of experiences which are all too real for some of our most vulnerable patients.

There are a couple of great interviews with the author about the book here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/12/sunjeeva-sahota-books-interview-the-year-of-the-runaways

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ktmzc

This episode Tara is talking to Emma Cunliffe a locum civilian medical practitioner for the MOD and long standing Out of Hours GP about Fredrick Backman's book A Man Called Ove. They talk about unexpected friendships, grumpy old men, grief and how life experiences shape us in unimaginable ways.

This book does explore suicidal thoughts and attempts and whilst framed in a lighthearted way it is important we don't trivialise the topic or dismiss the topic.

If you are having thoughts of ending your own life, please try to reach out to someone

Samaritans run a 24hr helpline:

https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/

Campaign to end loneliness:

https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org

Age UK

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/brighter/

For younger people

https://www.papyrus-uk.org

This week Tara is talking to Catriona Davis a remote and rural GP on Islay about Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. We explore themes around relationships, bereavement, child bereavement in particular, plagues and getting lost in stories.

Some resources you may find helpful

Child Bereavement UK

Helpline 0800 028 8840

https://www.childbereavementuk.org

RCGP Child Bereavement Guidelines
https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/blog/index.php?entryid=48

SANDS – the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society

https://www.sands.org.uk

The Lullaby Trust – specifically relating to SIDS

https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk

SIMBA
https://www.simbacharity.org.uk/

Held in our Hearts
https://heldinourhearts.org.uk/

Tara speaks to Jo Stewart, a GP in Western Australia about James Rhodes’ book Instrumental. We talk about Adverse Childhood Experiences, Attachment, language, safeguarding and the power of holding space.

Find out more about James Rhodes here https://www.jamesrhodes.tv

*TRIGGER WARNING*:
This is a very dark book in places and in the discussion we talk about the catastrophic abuse Rhodes suffered at the hands of a trusted adult. This might not be an episode for everyone and please don’t listen in the car with your kids listening too.

Spotify Playlist as recommended by James Rhodes to accompany the book https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mmEdd2fEpEiejq4lg2jZE

RESOURCES JO AND TARA THINK MIGHT BE USEFUL

The abetternhs blog written by Jonathon Tomlinson is incredible. This specific post is well worth reading: https://abetternhs.net/2017/10/15/we-need-to-talk-about-trauma/ though the whole blog is totally brilliant
Calculate ACE scores and find out more about Adverse Childhood Experiences here: https://acestoohigh.com
I cannot recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk enough on the subject of the effect of trauma
Finally, the amazing novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This week Tara is talking to Charlotte Squires, digital media editor for the British Geriatric Society and the organiser of the wonderful #geribookclub on twitter about Richard Osman's debut "The Thursday Murder Club".

They discuss the evolution of relationships, putting older people front and centre in a novel, the value of role models and why #bemorejoyce should be trending ...

Interestingly after we'd recorded the episode, and talked about Chris and his relationship with food, but before the episode was released, this brilliant Guardian interview with Richard Osman came out and perhaps explains why and how he wrote so effectively about Chris' relationship with food which we'd picked up in our chat: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/dec/26/richard-osman-reveals-difficult-journey-with-food-addiction?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

For more resources around eating disorders the national charity Beat is always great https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

Tara talks to Nicola Davis about Night Feeds and Morning Songs a glorious collection of poems about motherhood (collected and curated by Ana Sampson who was Tara's guest on 7th December for the Christmas shopping episode)

The talk about the romanticised idyll of motherhood vs the reality, juggling multiple roles, the value of good perinatal care and the fabulous accessibility of poetry when you have a very short attention span.

Apologies that there are some very funny noises in the edit here, we decided the conversation was too good to throw the recording away but do acknowledge it's not up to the usual bedside reading clarity standards.

RESOURCES
RCGP perinatal mental health toolkit:
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/resources/toolkits/perinatal-mental-health-toolkit.aspx

RCPsych Perinatal Resources
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health

This week Tara talks to Zuhriya Muazu a Doncaster GP about Laurie Frankel's "The Atlas of Love". They talking about being good enough, what families look like in the modern world and how much human beings have the capacity for love and change.

This episode Tara talks to Rema Jyothirmayi about When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. They talk about doctors as patients, the importance of role models, making choices for yourself and choices for others and how different palliative care seems to be in the US compared to the UK.

Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down for a reflective listen

Today Tara and Ana Sampson explore some great ideas for books for everyone’s Christmas list. We talk about motherhood, the secret world of the hospital, pretentious gifts, and the power of nature among many other relevant topics.

Find Ana @anabooks on Instagram and twitter or her website https://www.anasampson.co.uk
Her stunning recent anthology “Night Feeds and Morning Songs” is well worth a read too (and look out for a guest discussing that on this podcast in a few weeks' time)

Ana’s Top 5 for your Christmas List

The Republic of Motherhood – Liz Berry
Performance of the title poem here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDyvUDZPyL0

Nightbitch – Rachel Yoder

Can you hear me? – Jake Jones

Histories – Sam Guglani

Wintering – Katherine May

Other Books we talked about

Ophelia Swam – Kelley Swain
After the storm – Emma Jane Unsworth
Larchfield – Polly Clarke
I am not your Babymother – Candice Braithwaite
I love you but I have Chosen Darkness - Claire Vaye Watkins

Other more medical resources

RCGP Perinatal Mental Health Toolkit
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/resources/toolkits/perinatal-mental-health-toolkit.aspx

RCOG response to the MBRACE report
https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-responds-to-latest-mbrrace-uk-maternal-report/

In this episode Tara talks to Henry Goldstein, adolescent physician and one of the founders of the incredible paediatric FOAMed organisation Don't Forget the Bubbles about Tim Winton's thought provoking and absorbing novel Cloudstreet.They talk about the fact that reading fiction can only ever improve your skills as a clinician, the power of narrative, the value of looking at life from different perspectives and how much the world has changed since the 1950s and what a phenomenal journey this means our older patients have taken.

Henry is a founder and director of https://dontforgetthebubbles.com a website with a wealth of child and adolescent heath resources including this brilliant article about anorexia nervosa, a subject touched on in the discussion today https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/anorexia-nervosa/

In this episode Tara talks to Naren Senthil Nathan about Gareth Thomas' Memoir "Stronger". They discuss whether you need to be a sports fan to enjoy a sporting memoir (not for this book!), stigma, ignorance, HIV education and good communication

In this launch episode Tara talks to Liz Herrieven about Matthew Dicks' novel "Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend". They discuss imaginary friends, what we need vs what others think we need, getting "stuck", getting unstuck and the importance of being loved.

Liz also shared the wonderful mnemonic TEACH for improving communication when talking to children with LD and autism:

T - Time (you may well need extra time)

E - Environment (maybe somewhere quiet, reduce stimulation, noise and fear)

A - Attitude (avoiding diagnostic overshadowing, no assumptions)

C - Communication (visual clues, social stories)

H - Help (what help do we need, what help do they need, hospital passports, recognise carer's expertise)

welcome to bedside reading, I can't wait to start sharing books and ideas with you, the podcast goes live on Tuesday 16th November, here's a tiny taster to whet your appetite