Aneurin Bevan called it “quite the most ambitious adventure in the care of national health that any country has seen”. Nigel Lawson called it “the closest thing the English have to a religion.” And it’s been called by our guest tonight “an expression of what’s best in our society”.

We are, of course, talking about the NHS. 

After another report about just how much the staff and the patients they treated endured during the Covid-19 pandemic, our Deputy Director Lena Swedlow will be joined by Dr. Gavin Francis to talk about two books he’s written, Free for All: Why the NHS is worth saving (2023) and The Unfragile Mind (2026).

Gavin became a doctor in 1999, first studying neuroscience, and has since become a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal Society of Literature.

We’ll delve not only into the current challenges the NHS is facing and how we might address them, but also because this is the podcast where we get into the bloody complicated stuff – the politics of the NHS.