A Fortunate Woman

Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry … There has been no shortage in recent years of books about healthcare … With this gem, Morland has done something similar for general practice. Let’s just hope the policymakers listen. – Christina Patterson * Sunday Times *The doctor’s kindly, hollistic approach - she makes time to investigate her patients’ social as well as physical needs - seems to evoke a lost world … Morland’s book contains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all. – Wendy Moore * TLS *Polly Morland is a journalist and film-maker with a kindly, dramatic writing style and a feel for the human story … This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape – “the valley” itself is a defining feature of people’s lives. – Kathleen Jamie * New Statesman *‘Here is inbuilt drama, the tug of emotion, self-sacrifice and community, all topped with the glisten of protruding bones and accompanied by howls of anguish.’ * The Times *Polly Morland and Richard Baker have more than done justice to the original John Berger book - and produced a work that stimulates the eye and mind in equal measure. – Alain de BottonI was consoled and compelled by this book’s steady gaze on healing and caring. The writing is beautiful. – Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater and Ghost WallSuperb - beautiful, enthralling, careful, tender, a humanitarian act in itself, deeply moral, moving, lucid and loving. – Laura Cumming, James Tait Black-winner and bestselling Costa-shortlisted author of The Vanishing Man and On Chapel SandsAll human life is here in this evocative portrayal of the challenges and joys of rural family doctoring in modern times. Enthralling and uplifting. – James LeFanu, author The Rise & Fall of Modern MedicineA Fortunate Woman is the best book I’ve read about general practice for a long time. Astonishingly perceptive, it shows how a committed GP can keep human values alive in an increasingly impersonal NHS – and why we urgently need more like her. – Professor Roger Neighbour OBE. Past President, Royal College of General Practitioners

General practice has long been the jewel in the crown of the UK National Health Service; A Fortunate Woman sets out in compelling detail the relationship-based care that will be lost forever if we do not act to support and revitalise a profession under threat. It is a vibrant and authentic portrait of the rural family doctor in these difficult contemporary times.

Polly Morland is a writer and documentary maker. She worked for fifteen years in television, producing and directing documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. She is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines and is the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in the School of Journalism, Media & Culture at Cardiff University. She is the author of several books, including The Society of Timid Souls: Or, How to Be Brave, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year, and A Fortunate Woman.