Journalism and other writing
Having worked as a freelance journalist for more than 15 years I have had features, book reviews and other articles published in The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, the British Medical Journal and many other publications.
I currently write articles for the Sunday Telegraph, The Times and the BMJ and a column on medical history for the BMJ as well as occasional contributions elsewhere.
Most recent
Ye Olde Tudor Health Market - BMJ
Hans Sloane's bitter taste of success - BMJ
Lancets and Libel - BMJ
Royal insights on smoking - BMJ
Elementary, my Dear - BMJ
Rhyme and Reason - BMJ
Dr Johnson's 'peculiar pleasure' - BMJ
Uninsured in America? Blame the first world war - BMJ
Behind the Fairground Curtain - BMJ
Women of Substance - BMJ
Handel's Hidden Life - History Today
The Marvelous Hairy Girls - book review - Sunday Telegraph
The Atmosphere of Heaven - book review - Times
The Scotsman - Wedlock: WHEN MARY ELEANOR BOWES, the 37-year-old Countess of Strathmore, set off in her carriage from her London home at noon on 10 November 1786, she was looking forward to a rare visit with a friend. Having fled her bullying second husband, Andrew Robinson Bowes, less than two years earlier, she still relished her hard-won freedom. Read on
To read my book reviews and articles published in the Sunday Telegraph click on one of the links below:
The Marvelous Hairy Girls - book review: Sunday Telegraph
The curious history of death - The Dying Game by Melanie King
The book that changed the course of medical history - Gray's Anatomy celebrates 150th anniversary
Losing sleep over prions - The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D. T. Max
Consorting with kings and body-snatchers - Digging up the Dead by Druin Burch
Outsmarted by microbes - Deadly Companions by Dorothy H. Crawford [currently not online]
To read my articles in the Times click on the link below:
The Atmosphere of Heaven - book review: Biography of Thomas Beddoes
Bugs as pets - Insects - even cockroaches - make ideal pets and can nurture a love of nature in children
The English Patients - Behind the illnesses of famous historical figures
To read my book reviews in the BMJ click on one of the links below:
A Giddy Dance - Bedlam: London and its Mad by Catharine Arnold
Lethal Practice - Insulin Murders by Vincent Marks and Caroline Richmond
Watching the Detectives - The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Walking London's Medical History - by Nick Black
To read my Past Caring columns in the BMJ click on one of the links below:
Dr Johnson's peculiar pleasure: In an age of heroic surgery, and even more heroic patients, the literary genius Samuel Johnson deserved a medal of the highest order for his stoicism in the face of suffering.
Uninsured in America? Blame the first world war: In healthcare reform, timing is everything. The enthusiasts who first tried to bring compulsory health insurance to the United States were convinced that conditions were perfect for success at the beginning of the 20th century.
Women of Substance: The future is female— within a decade most UK doctors will be women—but then so was the past.
Of Rabbit and Humble Pie: In a world where health scares and medical uncertainty can so easily spiral into kneejerk reactions and blind panic, it is always useful to maintain a sense of reality. Or so Sir Richard Manningham, physician to George I, had to remind himself when faced with the unlikely tale of a woman who had given birth to 17 rabbits.
Peninsular derring-do: The dangers and deprivations of battlefield surgery will always demand seemingly superhuman feats of courage. Yet the sheer derring do of the early 19th century army surgeon George Guthrie (1785-1856) seems culled straight from the pages of a Boy’s Own story.
The first George W - When any politician sneezes or mops a brow, flunkies flap in panic and rivals circle greedily. When that politician is leader of the world’s largest democracy, any hint of less than tip top health commands global attention.
And for my next trick - In the laudable history of clinical trials, little has given doctors more pleasure than the demonstration of the placebo effect, particularly when it is used to undermine unorthodox treatments.
Ye olde guide to healthy living - Faced with today’s baffling profusion of self help advice, ranging from the daft to the downright dangerous, bewildered patients could do worse than return to the wholesome simplicity of Restoration England.
Searching for Dr Condom - Although it is one of medicine’s longest surviving, most popular, and most effective advances, we know tantalisingly little about the origins of the condom.
Before Beveridge - Reformer Beatrice Webb died a tragic five years before the creation of the National Health Service she outlined in 1909. But that was nothing to John Bellers, the Quaker philanthropist who advocated a state funded health service more than two centuries before Britain’s Labour government took the hint.
Food, inglorious food - With rumblings about the colourings, flavourings, and preservatives secreted in our everyday food growing loud enough to make us choke on our television dinners, it is tempting to yearn for a golden age when we could all trust in the purity of good honest victuals.
Having a nose for it - Have they? Haven’t they? Today gossip magazines fill column inches pondering which celebrities have had a nose job. Two centuries ago there was no such doubt but just as much fascination when news of a remarkable nose reconstruction reached Europe from India.
All together now - In celebrating the 60th anniversary of the World Health Organization this year, it is humbling to reflect that for most of human history international cooperation has been notable by its absence.
Homoeopathy and the star that fell - Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some tragically squander greatness in a hopelessly misguided obsession, launching centuries of self delusion.
A man who called hospitals to account - Sir Derek Wanless is not the first banker to call health services to account with his hard hitting criticism of productivity and efficiency.
Now wash your hands - Pontius Pilate washed his hands of blame. Lady Macbeth feverishly tried to scrub away the "damned spot." Yet healthcare professionals have remained imperviously resilient to the handwashing message.
Jobs for the boys - Climbing the greasy medical career ladder used to be so much simpler. Before the advent of tedious form-filling, maddening technical hitches, and the unseemly scramble for too few posts, obtaining a plum job for life was governed by an application system that everyone could understand: nepotism.
Grave expectations - A dearth of suitable bodies has long been a cause of sleepless nights for surgeons.
Heads you lose - Ever since Hippocrates supposedly uttered the injunction "First do no harm," doctors have been inextricably associated with squandering lives in the name of political and religious ideology.
Keeping mum - Commercial confidentiality has always had an uneasy relation with the Hippocratic oath.
So many, so wrong - Somewhere in the basement beneath the Hall of Fame there is a dusty broom cupboard reserved for those who have championed history's greatest medical errors.
To read my other articles in the BMJ click below:
Remains of the olden days - Review of new exhibition - Skeletons - at the Wellcome Collection, London
Exhibition hopes to give Gray's Anatomy artist his proper due - 150th anniversary of Gray's Anatomy