A Fortunate Woman

Polly Morland and Richard Baker have more than done justice to the original John Berger book and produced a work that stimulates the eye and mind in equal measure. Alain de Botton A Fortunate Woman is a compelling thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a country doctor. Funny moving and not afraid of the dark it will speak to readers everywhere. Polly Morland was clearing her late mother’s house when she found a battered paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it she was astonished to see an old photograph of the remote wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate Man John Berger’s classic account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling true story and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways. Working within a community she loves she is a rarity in contemporary medicine a modern doctor who knows her patients inside out the lives of this ancient wild place entwined with her own. Revisiting Berger’s story after half a century of seismic change both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practised A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today’s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor’s story with those of her patients reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community and upon the wider role of medicine in society a unique portrait of a twentyfirst century family doctor emerges. Illustrated throughout with photographs by Richard Baker. All human life is here in this evocative portrayal of the challenges and joys of rural family doctoring in modern times. Enthralling and uplifting. James LeFanu author The Rise Fall of Modern Medicine I was consoled and compelled by this book’s steady gaze on healing and caring. The writing is beautiful. Sarah Moss author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall A vibrant and authentic portrait of the rural family doctor in these difficult contemporary times. Trisha Greenhalgh Professor of Primary Care at the University of Oxford