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  • Published: 26 January 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241991879
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384

Fighting for Life

The Twelve Battles that Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future

  • Isabel Hardman



A gripping exploration of the National Health Service, told through the most critical moments in its history

Since its foundation in 1948, the NHS has come to define our national identity, making history (and the headlines) again and again - from cutting edge discoveries like the first 'test tube baby', to its heroic response to the Coronavirus crisis. But the NHS has also become a battleground for some of the fiercest political contests of our time, perceived either as a national treasure, or as a lumbering piece of state machinery in need of renovation.

In Fighting for Life, bestselling journalist Isabel Hardman cuts through the sentimentality and sloganeering on all sides of the political spectrum. Packed with gripping stories from the people at the beating heart of this venerated institution - its nurses, doctors, patients and the politicians who decide its fate - this is the essential book for understanding our NHS, and who we are as a nation.

  • Published: 26 January 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241991879
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384

Praise for Fighting for Life

This remarkable and immensely readable book looks back at the highs and lows of the NHS's first 75 years, and asks critical questions about its future. Thought-provoking, despairing, eye-opening, and inspiring in equal measure

Sir David Haslam

Passionate, deeply researched and page-turningly full of good stories, this is so good one is tempted to say it is the book the NHS has always deserved

Andrew Marr

A superb, rollercoaster account of the NHS . . . This completely riveting and scrupulously researched book shows how, just like its patients, the NHS sways precariously between money, morality and mortality, and trust, trauma and triumph

Juliet Nicolson

A compelling thriller . . . Fighting for Life provides vivid and urgently needed context to the familiar daily news stories about the crises in the NHS

Steve Richards

A must-read for anyone interested in how the NHS started and why we have ended up where we are. A thoroughly fascinating, comprehensive and critical analysis

Dr Ranj Singh

A fascinating, insightful and forensic history of the NHS by a journalist who understands the politics as well as the policy of the health service. Essential reading

Rachel Sylvester

This is a sensational and much-needed book: funny, intelligent and so beautifully written that it doesn't read like normal non-fiction . . . thorough, scholarly and above all readable

Chris van Tulleken

Brilliant

Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt and Undoctored

A compelling, deftly constructed and powerfully told narrative . . . Hardman is a meticulous journalist with a gift for storytelling. Necessary reading

Rafael Behr, Guardian

Terrific . . . Every aspect of this history is informed and beautifully written

Alan Johnson, Observer, Book of the Week

It has by far the best analysis of where the health service came from, and where it's going . . . full of excellent stories

Karol Sikora, The Telegraph

A kaleidoscopic history of the NHS

Henry Marsh, New Statesman

Hardman's writing is breezily accessible, and her deeply researched book is full of colourful vignettes and an enjoyable spice of gossip . . . she is particularly good at locating the NHS within the wider social movements that have changed British life over the 75 years of its existence

Sarah Neville, Financial Times

Vivid and fascinating, this is a beautifully cogent, balanced and human biography of a health service haunted by its own mythology . . . Hardman is impressively even-handed and unsentimental

Melanie Reid, The Times, Book of the Week

Hardman provides an admirable account of the struggles of the [health service] . . . She is lucid, fair and unpolemical

Andrew Gimson, Conservative Home

A brilliantly written and engrossing biography of the NHS . . . compelling and even-handed

Kate Womersley, The Spectator