Andrew has discussed his research on BBC Radio 4's 'Start the Week', BBC Radio 5 Live, the HistoryExtra podcast, and The Majority Report. He has delivered large public lectures at Mansfield College, Oxford and Newcastle University, as well as smaller talks at bookstores, libraries, and literary festivals.

Scottish Executive Nurse Directors: Theresa Williamson, Associate Nurse Director, Golden Jubilee National Hospital

Radio 5 Live

An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, exploring its surprising survival—and the people who have kept it running. In a Newsnight special marking the NHS’s 75th anniversary, Kirsty Wark asks the big questions about the future of UK healthcare. Broadcasting live from Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, Kirsty will be joined by TV doctor Xand van Tullekan and people working at the heart of the health service, to ask is the NHS on life support or fit for the future? BBC One All our events remain free and open to all, but pre-booking is required. Bookings for this lecture will open at 10.00am on 28 September. Blair claimed (incorrectly) in 1998 that Britain was ‘one of the few countries where they feel your pulse before they feel your wallet if you collapse in the street’.

Ros Turnbull is a trainee Doctor in A&E working in a system which leaves little time for empathy but then a diagnosis changes everything. Al Smith's two part drama examines the NHS from the viewpoint of a Doctor who becomes a patient. Today I want to say thank you to all the staff. I know how hard you work, how dedicated you are and how much you sacrifice. Anenurin Bevan, Minister of Health, on the first day of the NHS (5th July 1948) at Park Hospital, Davyhulme, via University of Liverpool. These aspirations did not go quite to plan. Other nations rarely followed the British example in organising medical services and conservative critics in the US subjected the NHS to a relentless smear campaign, presenting it as emblematic of the apparent evils of ‘socialized medicine’.Our NHSwas published in the summer of 2023, during a period of serious concern for the health service. The waiting list figures for treatment stood at their worst levels on record, strikes among health professionals unfolded across the service, and unknown numbers of NHS staff seemed to be emigrating for better conditions and pay overseas. Nonetheless, the NHS also received an enormous amount of celebration – including, a service in Westminster Abbey, an NHS ‘Big Tea’ occurring in different parts of the U.K., and a new commemorative fifty pence piece from the Royal Mint. Though I learned first-hand about the serious challenges facing the service from doctors and patients in my audiences as I spoke about the book after its publication, I also encountered public attachment to the NHS that reminded me why it had lasted through other periods of crisis. I hope that my small contribution to telling the service’s history might provide us with another perspective when we think about its future. It is a ritual dance displaying a peculiarity of British politics. The country that led global trends in privatisation of state assets and whose most electorally successful party makes a fetish of free-market enterprise finds itself also home to one of the world’s most popular and durable socialist institutions.