Richard Smith's non-medical blogs
My Italian Journey. Sunday 24 May. Day thirteen. Milan to Paris
Quotes from The Greatest Benefit to Mankind – A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present by Roy Porter. I: The prominence of medicine has lain only in small measure in its ability to make the sick well.
Independent Commission on Whole Person Care takes on new significance now that Andy Burnham is prime minister. What did it say?
My Italian Journey. Saturday 23 May. Day twelve. Verona to Milan
Kurt Vonnegut: A brilliant short story of 50 words that is engaging, funny, metaphysical, post-modrn, and a blistering comment on our modern way of life (This title, including these words is 33 words.)
My Italian Journey. Friday 22 May. Day eleven. Venice to Verona
How reading one book can influence how you read the next: from Kurt Vonnegut to the madness of George III
Healthcare not only fails to respond to suffering but often makes it worse
A novel that is a “treatise on love”
My Italian Journey: Thursday 21 May 21: Day Ten: Venice
An enjoyable play that centres on the great theatre that came from the contrast between Henry Irving and Ellen Terry
How should the old live? Should we stop life-extending treatment to those over 75?
My Italian Journey. Wednesday 20 May: Day nine: Venice
Two favourite descriptions of death and dying
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
My Italian Journey: 19 May: Day eight: Venice
Is the BMA doing well?
Not everybody has a huge nose, but Cyrano’s anxieties are common
Zurbarán: painter of death and saints
Two mysterious forces that make for great art and much more
My Italian Journey: Monday 18 ay: Day seven: Ravenna to Venice
Lady Chatterley’s Lover: more a philosophical treatise than a “dirty book”
My Italian Journey: Sunday 17 May: Day six. Bologna to Ravenna
How to see great art and feel rich for an hour
My Italian Journey: Saturday 16 May: Day five: Ferrara
Personal connections with British prime ministers
Memories of my friend Jamie
My Italian Journey: Friday 15 May: Day four: Rome to Bologna
A short, enjoyable novel that explains how we are all lonely
My Italian Journey: Thursday 14 May: Day three: Rome
My Italian Journey: Wednesday 13 May: Day two: Milan to Rome
“Surgeon philosophers” debate vitalism, the soul, and consciousness
My Italian Journey. Tuesday 12 May: Day one: London to Milan
Memories of a good friend, Joseph Ana
Why did a readable novel about a plague year in a village fall short for me?
Lady Chatterley consults a physician in the 1920s and 2026
A comic novel on the unfunny state of being Jewish in Britain today
A novel about loneliness written in unique language
Can grammar hold the world together or has its power been usurped by AI?
Might “neurodivergent” be the best word (or “diagnosis”) for Janet Frame?
A visit to the Tracey Emin exhibition at Tate Modern
A magnificent book that through telling the story of a family who resisted Hitler captures those strange years from the 1920s to the end of the war
Advice on what to do if you meet the Ancient Mariner on the High Seas
What to vote now my vote matters?
A writer’s farewell
The Anti-Death League: an arid “modern classic” but with good quotes condemning God
Are we living in a version of the Weimar Republic?
A memorable day
THE book to read if you’re interested in power
‘Life is a comedy, with sad bits.’ This is Happiness by Niall Williams
Love and death: two poems from Shakespeare’s plays
A concise statement of our world’s predicament: are we already in a collapse?
Marvelous writing on love: “love was where everyone was trying to get to”
How at a fancy dinner I’m twice reminded that we are animals
A new and weird game for you to play with your partner
“It’s wanting to know that makes us matter”: one theme of a great play
A tale of two (make that three) bitches
A tale in which our hero experiences a medical miracle
An entrancing play that captures the defining scene in the life of Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot)
My obituary of Tessa Richards, reflections on writing obituaries, and my personal memories of Tessa
The 30-year campaign of Tessa Richards to make patient partnership in the NHS and the BMJ a reality rather that a largely-ignored aspiration
My Plan Bs for sustaining health care: please share yours
Death is the main shaper of medical care
Strange conversation
A novel on the making of the Lancet and of Thomas Wakley, “the medical Florence Nightingale”
“Doing science” with our granddaughters
“Nobody dies saying ‘I wish I’d spent more time on the office.’” Well, I might be the first
Hanging out with Nazis and watching a magnificent play
Not guilty verdict in trial of doctors and nurses for criminal damage to world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels shows importance of juries and public support for strong action on the climate crisis
At last, somebody who admires my dancing
A dance inspired by a suicide note
How to steal the 2026 US elections
“Eating people is wrong” (Or is it?)
Three couples are offered a chance to reconsider or renegoiate their marriage
An ancient civilisation collapsed because of lack of water, modern Iran may be about to follow, and many others may follow later
A powerful play based on the trial of six doctors and nurses for climate protests should be on national television of radio
Don’t just read a book, mine it
Fiction and non-fiction: is there any real difference?
Turner and Constable: “compare and contrast”
“There is no wealth but life” and “flat of the curve” healthcare
How does it feel on the first day of a war?
Flesh: a great existential novel or a case of the emperor’s clothes?
A weak novel but filled with ideas on death, longevity, and much more
The answers of Donald J Trump and Vladimir Putin to the five central questions posed by Rutgers Breman and answered by all religions
New Year Story
How small committed groups can change the world and how we need new groups now in a time of crisis
Rutger Bregman’s answers to the five great questions that all religions answer and we must answer for ourselves if we don’t follow a religion
Wright of Derby: tenebrist painter of science and the Enlightenment
How to write a readable and enjoyable novel about the climate crisis: invent a new form
Why are there more kings that queens?
“Mummy, can we go to another funeral tomorrow?”
A life-enhancing novel in which pride comes before resounding crashes
Exploring why healthcare systems promote inhuman behaviour
Stories and lessons from history on a doctors’ strike: how everybody loses, patients most of all
Police absurdities
Four views on whether the NHS suffers from an “infinity of demand”
Can prostate cancer propel Wes Streeting into Downing Street?
Hope for avoiding the harm from the climate and nature crisis without action is damaging and nothing but a deceiving sedative
What is money for? A discussion between father and son
“Are you looking forward to the festive season?” ( A story with no act III. Like life)
An economist with glamour: the day I seemed to fall in love with the now-fallen Larry Summers
Britain after the war with its new welfare state: the New Jerusalem or a crucial step in Britain’s continuing decline?
The story of the poet and his great poem comprised of grief and loss of faith
A wife sees the magic of football
A “modest proposal”: the NHS offers only symptomatic and palliative care to those over 75
Into the heart of darkness: Walthamstow
Revisiting J Alfred Prufrock
A powerful confession filled with grief, memory, and war
My first firing
Sebastian Barry on grief, memory, and writing
A disappointing novel from which I collected a rich haul of negative quotes about Venice
Two books that have led me to reflect on my loss of faith and on what I do believe
Victor Hugo’s 1831 vivid account of sex (only with a bell not a woman)
Blogs and quotes from The Diversity of Life by EO Wilson: a treasure trove
What is “the death of birth” apart from being a chilling phrase?
“The most enjoyable biography ever written”?
Why we should be eating turtles, iguanas, and winged beans not beef
The extraordinariness of ordinary people celebrated in a comic bovel
Drummond Rennie, obituary of a friend
Taxonomy of a familiar primate
A young artist reflects on how an old artist might feel about his life
What made you become a writer? A novel with an exciting answer
An old man, a young woman, and the possibility of marriage
How to connect with nature by looking at the creatures that live in your forehead
The end of disease and the beginning of health
Success for the single patient record depends on citizens and patients owning their data
A stroll and discoveries in Chelsea
Mansfield Park: Is Fanny a drip or a protofeminist?
Messages I took from Virginia Woolf’s great essay “A Room of One’s Own”