Intensive Care

A Spectator Book of the Year
An Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Irish Times and Scotsman 2021 Non-Fiction Highlight

'Compassionate, beautifully written .. will only grow in importance and interest as the years go by' Jenny Colgan, Spectator

'Searing yet beautiful ... less a hot take that an astute manifesto for what matters most in life, as well as in medicine.' Rachel Clarke, author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic and Your Life in My Hands

'Well written, often entertaining and occasionally deeply moving; an unmissable account of a year we will all try too hard to forget.' The Times

'Inspiring. I can't recommend it too strongly. You will learn a lot from it, and you will find much more that is encouraging.' Allan Massie, Scotsman

Intensive Care is about how coronavirus emerged, spread across the world and changed all of our lives forever. But it's not, perhaps, the story you expect.

Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic arrived in our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global disaster. And he saw how the true cost of the virus was measured not just in infections, or deaths, or ITU beds, but in the consequences of the measures taken against it.

In this deeply personal account of eighteen months spent caring for a society in crisis, Francis will take you from rural village streets to local clinics and communal city stairways. And in telling this story, he reveals others: of loneliness and hope, illness and recovery, and of what we can achieve when we care for each other.