Bedside Reading

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 depress...

Send us Fan Mail 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 podcas...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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, th...

Send us Fan Mail 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'...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 c...

Send us Fan Mail 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 & au...

Send us Fan Mail 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 t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 AC...

Send us Fan Mail 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 not 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 nove...

Send us Fan Mail 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, pr...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 a...

Send us Fan Mail 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 t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 on...