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I recently wrote on Conservative Home that whoever removed bursaries from the training of nurses did not understand nursing. Anyone wishing to do so might begin with the first of these memoirs.
Christie Watson spent twenty years as a nurse, beginning in mental health and proceeding through almost all areas to become a specialist resuscitation nurse and mentor to others. Her book starts slowly, taking us through the years of teenage dreams, indecision and dead-end jobs to work as a volunteer with Scope. She found the work worthwhile, and, “although I had nothing, I was happy.” An experienced nurse suggested she take up nursing - “They give you a bursary and somewhere to live.”
Christie soon found herself dealing with the extremes of life and death, finding time to talk to an elderly lady with a heart murmur, being taken for ride by a mental patient pretending to be her nurse supervisor, washing the body of a child who has died and propping up her chin so that her appearance would not cause additional distress to her parents, surviving, thanks to her (by then) ex-husband surgeon, a catastrophic mistake when she cut a child’s breathing tube by mistake. Throughout the early years, the voice of experience from midwives and sisters is close by, building expertise and confidence. “You’ll be fine,” says Sister Anna, “I’m here.” Right on both counts. This book goes from the mundane to the searing in the blink of an eye, including a moving and brilliant chapter on Ms Watson’s application of her nursing skills to the task of adopting a child with learning difficulties, greatly aided by her daughter, who immediately accepts him as her brother. In our current context, one thing shines through – nursing and neoliberalism have nothing in common.
“This is Going to Hurt” is a doctor’s story with a sad ending – what may, or may not, have been a mistake under extreme pressure, in a very difficult case, led to Adam Kay’s giving up. His career was mostly spent in obstetrics, carrying out as many as 16 caesarian sections in a night. Eventually, the bad times – as he puts it, “recorded in HD” - won out over the many lives he saved, and he left, finding a new career as a comedy writer. A gruelling story, including much medical information, and financial facts of life for junior doctors in the NHS, delivered with a light touch. Well worth reading.
William Clegg QC’s “Under the Wig” describes a journey to the top end of the criminal bar, beginning in 1972 with his “interview” for pupillage – dinner at the home of a friend of his father’s ended with “Ok, you’re in, when do you want to start?” - and concluding, anti-climactically, with a successful defence in the phone hacking trial. Like many such memoirs, it has a good deal of explanation of basic legal procedures, but Mr Clegg’s choice of cases, and his clients, are interesting, and he is frank about the ways in which he sets about a case, constructing arguments, whittling away at the basis of the opposition’s evidence, talking to juries and appeal judges, and indeed how to become a QC. The cases include several well-known murders, including that of the much-loved tv presenter Jill Dando, and fraud, which he manages to make interesting. Mr Clegg’s chambers no longer undertake legal aid cases, a departure from the cab rank principle that is justified by the derisory level of fees in relation to the work required. The situation is, incidentally, now so bad that the only way in which many barristers can earn more than their train fare is the amount they’re paid for reading the case papers, the number of which can run into thousands.
Sarah Langford is a barrister whose work has a surprising amount in common with that of Christie Watson. While most of William Clegg’s clients are accused of headline crimes, hers are repeat petty offenders, parents trying to make a life for themselves and their children, gay men facing disgrace, if not conviction, for indecency in public toilets, wives suffering because of loyalty to their criminal husbands, all in all a catalogue of human misery to which she brings hard work, competence and, where she can, kindness. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes the judge gets it right against her judgement and the wishes of her clients, sometimes she has to walk away, having fought one losing fight too many on behalf of a client who has no intention of giving up burglary and to whom she is is, in effect, one of the tools of his trade. Sarah Langford is not on the gravy train of the legal profession – on my one venture into the High Court as an expert, the QC earned £23,500 for prep and his first day in court, with £2500 refreshers, and his less impressive junior £11,000 plus £1500 per day – and indeed, like many nurses, is barely earning a living, despite her distintion in her law conversion course. Her book pays us the complement of giving full explanations of legal procedures in notes at the end, rather than incorporating simpler ones in the text. I couldn’t put it down.