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How Not to be a Doctor

The essential book on how not to be a doctor – and how to be a better one.

Drawn from his popular medical columns over the years, John Launer shares fifty of his best-loved essays, covering topics from essentials skills they don’t teach you in medical school to his poignant account of being a patient himself as he received treatment for a life-threatening illness. Taken together, the stories make the case that being a doctor should mean drawing on every aspect of yourself, your interests and your experiences no matter how remote they seem from the medical task at hand.

How Not to Be a Doctor combines humour, candour and the human touch to inform and entertain readers on both ends of the stethoscope.

A Wood of One’s Own

Touring the West Country in the late 1990s, Pavey found herself in the Somerset Levels. On seeing this expanse of reclaimed land under its wide, soft skies she was struck by its beauty and set-out to plant a wood, tree by tree. She bought four acres, and over the years transformed them into a haven where woodland plants and creatures could flourish; an emblem of enduring life in a changeable world.

Interwoven with Pavey’s candid descriptions of the practical challenges she faced are forays into the Levels’ local history, as well as thoughtful portraits of its inhabitants past and present. Accompanied throughout by her evocative hand-drawn illustrations, A Wood of One’s Own is a lyrical, beguiling and inspiring story; a potent reminder of nature’s delicate balance, and its comforting and abiding presence.

The Friendship Cure

Our best friends, gal-pals, bromances, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, long- distance buddies and WhatsApp threads define us in ways we rarely acknowledge. There is so much about friendship we either don t know or don t articulate: why do some friendships last a lifetime, while others are only temporary? How do you break up with a toxic friend? And maybe the most important question: how can we live in the most interconnected age and still find ourselves stuck in the greatest loneliness epidemic of our time? It s killing us, making us miserable and causing a public health crisis. What if meaningful friendships are the solution, not a distraction 

In The Friendship Cure, Kate Leaver’s much anticipated manifesto brings to light what modern friendship means, how it can survive, why we need it and what we can do to get the most from it. From behavioural scientists to best mates, Kate finds extraordinary stories and research, drawing on her own experiences to create a fascinating blend of accessible smart thinking, investigative journalism, pop culture and memoir.

Flirting with French

William Alexander is not just a Francophile, he wants to be French. It’s not enough to explore the country, to enjoy the food and revel in the ambiance, he wants to feel French from the inside. Among the things that stand in his way is the fact that he can’t actually speak the language.

Setting out to conquer the language he loves (but which, amusingly, does not seem to love him back), Alexander devotes himself to learning French, going beyond grammar lessons and memory techniques to delve into the history of the language, the science of linguistics, and the art of translation. Along the way, during his travels in France or following his passion at home, he discovers that not learning a language may be its own reward.

Traversa

A fascinating account of the hardships and hilarity Fran Sandham experienced during his epic solo journey on foot across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania.

Inspired by the legendary crossings of the great explorers, Sandham left the daily grind of London to undertake an extraordinary adventure. Traversa describes his brushes with danger in the form of lions and snakes, land mines and bandits, his 2-month battle with a syphilitic donkey, malaria and the everyday troubles that arise when walking across Africa.

Underpinned with stories of the great explorers themselves – Livingstone, Stanley and Galton among others – Traversa is written proof of Sandham’s grit, determination and sheer obsession with Africa.

Iris and the Friends

Novelist and thinker Iris Murdoch died on 8 February 1999 after living for three years with Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband, novelist and academic John Bayley, had previously written movingly of the impact of her illness in Iris: A Memoir. Iris and the Friends tells of the final year of Murdoch’s life, when she was visited more by her own imaginary "friends" than by the exigencies of real life. It brings the story through Bayley’s increasingly precarious hold on present reality, to his own breakdown, Murdoch’s final happy weeks in a home for the terminally ill and finally her quiet death. Although ostensibly a sequel, it is more an exploration of Bayley’s new friends: the memories that were sparked off precisely as Murdoch lost her own–of his childhood, army years, first loves and, of course, their marriage. But there are other "friends". At one point Bayley writes: "The old Eng. Lit. again. I taught it for nearly fifty years and feel detached from it now." Yet literature emerges here as the one remaining constant in his life. Scarcely two pages go by without a reference, almost involuntary, to Hardy, Coleridge, Austen, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thurber, James, Lawrence, Woolf or Murdoch. Sometimes Iris appears to respond to the shared literary in-jokes, but more often the pair become "two animals pushing together, nudging and grooming each other, grunting together as they bask in a mutual doze."

Return To The Little Kingdom

Before Apple became the most valuable company in the world, it was just an idea sparked in a garage. Return to the Little Kingdom is Michael Moritz’s vivid, behind-the-scenes account of Apple’s explosive early years – a raw, fast-paced journey through invention, obsession and the birth of a movement. More than a story about Steve Jobs or a scrappy start-up, Return to the Little Kingdom is a rare blueprint of how enduring companies are built from nothing but vision and nerve.

Updated with Mortiz’s reflections on Apple’s extraordinary resurgence, this classic work is essential reading for founders, dreamers, and anyone determined to build the future. If you want to understand how empires are born, start here.

Widower’s House

Since the death in 1998 of his wife, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, John Bayley has given much thought to adjusting to his new, single status. As the carer of a victim of Alzheimer’s, his was in many ways a double-bereavement as Iris, in the sense of the person who John Bayley met and married, very slowly departed this world some years before her physical death. A meditation on bereavement and loss written in John Bayley’s inimitably sensitive and amusing style of reminiscence, Widower’s House reads like despatches from another, gentler era.

The Last Escaper

The product of a lifetimes reflection, The Last Escaper is Peter Tunstall’s unforgettable memoir of his days in the RAF and as one of the most celebrated of all British POWs. Tunstall was an infamous tormentor of his German captors dubbed the cooler king (on account of his long spells in solitary), but also a highly skilled pilot, loyal friend and trusted colleague. Without false pride or bitterness, Tunstall recounts the high jinks of training to be a pilot, terrifying bombing raids in his Hampden and of elaborate escape attempts at once hilarious and deadly serious all part of a poignant and human war story superbly told by a natural raconteur. The Last Escaper is a charming and hugely informative last testament written by the last man standing from the Colditz generation who risked their lives in the Second World War. It will take its place as one of the classic first-hand accounts of that momentous conflict.

Eat, Pray Love in Rome

Experience the Rome that changed and inspired Elizabeth Gilbert to write the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. When Luca Spaghetti (yes, that’s really his name) was asked to show Elizabeth around Rome he had no idea how his life was about to change. She embraced his Roman zest for life and Luca in-turn became her guardian angel, determined that his city would get her out of her funk.

Filled with colourful anecdotes about food, language, soccer, life in Rome, and culminating with the episodes in Liz’s bestselling memoir told from Luca’s side of the table, this is a book that every traveller to Rome will find enriching and readers of Eat, Pray, Love will not want to miss.

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