Health
We still love our failing NHS
A new poll about the NHS, the Sunday Times tells us, has discovered ‘a decline in support’ for the National…
How the ancients treated gout
Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be…
Why I donated a kidney to a stranger
Why I donated my kidney
Yoga has become a hot cultish mess
The dangers and distortion of yoga
How we fell for antidepressants
The French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, with his accustomed acuity about modern culture, titled his last novel but one Serotonin. By…
Finally, some justice for the infected blood scandal's victims
Why has the greatest patient scandal in the history of the NHS rumbled on for so long before its victims…
The small NHS failings that let down patients like my mother
The NHS is letting down patients in small, crucial ways
Why I won’t have a Covid booster
In the news recently, we’ve heard from multiple Britons who’ve lost family members or sacrificed their own health to Covid’s…
Medical emergency: general practice is broken
General practice is broken
Monkeypox, Covid and the trouble with our species
I hate to be one of those columnists who says ‘I told you so’. But I told you so. Looking…
The truth about Britain’s Covid deaths
There has been a considerable hoo-hah in the press about the recent World Health Organisation report estimating Covid-related deaths internationally…
The march of the ‘menosplainers’
The march of the ‘menosplainers’
Are we falling out of love with the NHS?
Clap for carers now feels like ancient history. Public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest since 1997, according…
The cancer care timebomb that desperately needs to be fixed
As many as 100,000 patients had a cancer that was missed, or had their diagnoses or treatments delayed during the…
The delicate business of writing poetry
Living, as Clive James put it, under a life sentence, and having refused chemotherapy, I find I respond to the…
Did Storm Eunice really break records?
Blow by blow Did Storm Eunice really set a new record for wind speed in England? A 122 mph gust…
The healing power of medieval austerity
Eighty yards west of the high terrace where I’ve sat for three weeks recuperating is a hospice built for Napoleon’s…
I got Covid (again) – is it time I got jabbed?
I got Covid a couple of weeks ago. Second time for me, which was annoying because I’d told Caroline that…
The best podcasts about money
Stories about money are never about money. They are about pain, about family, about atrocity, about luck, about health, about…
Do you really need to see the GP in person?
Only later, perhaps even a decade later, as the pandemic of 2020-22 shrinks in our rear-view mirror, may we be…
Do we want the nanny state tracking our every step?
The best thing that can be said about the government’s latest anti-obesity scheme is that it’s cheap. For now. The…
Why did we decide that Covid was over?
Look, I don’t know much epidemiology. Can’t pretend to. So what follows is, necessarily, a personal finger to the wind.…
‘I’m entitled not to listen to Sage’: an interview with Sajid Javid
Sajid Javid has big plans for the NHS – if Covid lets him
Boris Johnson and the Tory identity crisis
The Tory conference in Manchester will be a relatively muted affair. In part, this is because — as I say…
There’s one upside to having Parkinson’s disease
I am just back from my final salmon fishing trip of the year. I have never had a worse season…
