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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 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 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: 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.