Send us a textIt 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...
Send us a textWelcome 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 ...
Send us a textIt'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...
Send us a textA 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. ...
Send us a textTrigger warning: baby lossThis episode is especially for baby loss awareness week. Tamarin Norwood's incredible book about her son GabrielIn 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/fulltextAbout the book online:If you want to buy the book: https://theindigopress.com/product/the-song-of-the-whole-wide-world/)...
Send us a textIt 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 wr...
Send us a textA 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-t...
Send us a textIf 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 a...
Send us a textIt'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 ch...
Send us a textI 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 ...
Send us a textI'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 Algorithm 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 i...
Send us a textA 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, stor...
Send us a textIt'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 he...
Send us a textRegular 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...
Send us a textA 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...
Send us a textA warm welcome today to podcast legend and all round inspiration Dr Rachel Morris. Rachel is best known for hosting her own phenomenal podcast You Are Not A Frog https://youarenotafrog.com/ which helps people work smarter, beat burnout, think more and overthink less. Rachel is also a speaker, coach and former GP.Find Rachel's coaching business Wild Monday here: https://www.wildmonday.co.uk/We are talking about Elizabeth is Missing the wonderful novel by Emma Healey w...
Send us a textI'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 runni...
Send us a textToday'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 i...
Send us a textA 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 ...
Send us a textA 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 a...