Bedside Reading

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 hostag...

Send us Fan Mail 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 mod...

Send us Fan Mail 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,...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Dosan...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 phe...

Send us Fan Mail A warm welcome today to former GP and now headache specialist, Dr Janice Heath, who joins me today to talk about T he 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 web...

Send us Fan Mail 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 th...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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, t he 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 reall...

Send us Fan Mail 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 chos...

Send us Fan Mail 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 astonishi...

Send us Fan Mail 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 boo...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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&...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ca...

Send us Fan Mail 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 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 writ...

Send us Fan Mail 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 abou...

Send us Fan Mail 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 poe...