An energetically detailed account of the evolution of the NHS into an institution that mops up roughly a third of what the government spends on public services and a tenth of gross domestic product.”—Frances Cairncross, Literary Review An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, exploring its surprising survival—and the people who have kept it running Andrew Seaton is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History. He is a historian of modern Britain, with particular interests in political history, social history, and the history of medicine and the environment. Narrated by Lucy Worsley, Florence Nightingale: Nursing Pioneer follows the life of an extraordinary woman who revolutionised modern nursing and whose legacy continues to benefit million.

There is some truth in the assertion, but the NHS tells a different story. New Labour escalated the pre-existing welfare nationalism around the NHS to new heights. Its leading figures never stopped invoking ‘Our NHS’ in speeches and they made pointed comparisons with other countries.I also wanted to write a book that was both academically rigorous and would possess cross-over appeal to a general audience. Yale University Press seemed the perfect fit in this regard, allowing for ample space for both the things that academics tend to care about (references and scholarly debates) and the things that the general public prioritise (accessible prose and human stories). Among Yale’s titles in British history, Deborah Cohen’s Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions (2006) , Edmond Smith’s Merchants: The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire (2021), and Sasha Handley’s, Sleep in Early Modern England (2016) all provided examples of how to achieve such a balance. With the help of my editor, Jo Godfrey, and the encouragement of colleagues at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, where I completed the book as a postdoctoral researcher, I rewrote the manuscript and added two new chapters that more concretely brought the book up to the present.

Wounded from these reversals and criticisms, the supporters of the NHS on the left rarely spoke about the service as a beacon of inspiration by the 1970s. Seaton also charts an interesting grey zone where patriotic enthusiasm for a unique, beloved institution shades into “welfare nationalism” and resentment of foreigners gaining unearned access to a precious, limited resource. He and Hardman are in agreement on the vital role that immigration has played in keeping the health service functioning. Both are nuanced in mapping the contours of a public response that shades between welcoming foreign doctors and nurses, wary acceptance and flagrant racism. Breitmauer explores epidemics and pandemics through the ages, also looking at how the NHS has benefitted British society and the healthcare systems of countries across the globe. Our Stories: 75 Years of the NHS from the People who Built it, Lived it and Loved it Born in 1820 into a rich English family, Florence Nightingale was passionate about medicine from an early age. In a world where it was normal for women of society to remain at home, she broke through gender barriers and pioneered a profession in a field previously reserved for men. Britain’s National Health Service remains a cultural icon—a symbol of excellent, egalitarian care since its founding more than seven decades ago. Yet its success was hardly guaranteed, as Andrew Seaton makes clear in this elegantly written, highly original history of an institution that survived numerous crises to become a model for the democratic welfare state and the very antithesis of the health inequities we face today as Americans. A brilliant, thought-provoking portrait”.Anenurin Bevan, Minister of Health, on the first day of the NHS (5th July 1948) at Park Hospital, Davyhulme, via University of Liverpool. For BBC Radio 4, coverage will begin with Dr Kevin Fong and Isabel Hardman in a special episode of Start the Week alongside GP Phil Whitaker and the historian Andrew Seaton. Also that week, a one-off documentary The NHS at 75: Covid Memories will reflect on the pandemic through the experience of health service staff. New Labour took the trade union tradition of marking ‘NHS Day’ on 5th July and turned it into a national jamboree. Instead, the NHS became understood, as one early-1970s official promotional film termed it, as the British Way of Health (1973). The fact that Richard Marquand, who belonged to a family of Labour MPs, directed this film underlined the importance of left-wing figures in promoting the NHS as a uniquely British achievement. Professional Secretary, ScotMARAP: Ysobel Gourlay, Lead Antimicrobial Pharmacist, NHS GG&C Antimicrobial Management Team representatives

Florence dedicated her life to helping those in need. She was a trailblazer who led a group of nurses to care for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War and developed revolutionary views about hygiene and sanitation. Hailed as a heroine by Queen Victoria and the British people upon her return from the front, Florence Nightingale went on to establish the Nightingale Training School for Nurses and despite chronic illness, continued in her efforts to reform healthcare at home and abroad from her London salon.

NHS Highland: Dr Adam Brown, Consultant Microbiologist and Alison MacDonald, Area Antimicrobial Pharmacist

It remains to be seen if Labour can effectively use the example of the NHS to inspire an ambitious programme of social reform that ranges beyond the health service. Fast-forward 75 years and we reach the 12th of Hardman’s battles – the struggle, on multiple fronts, to protect Britain from the ravages of Covid, which also became a struggle to protect the NHS itself from falling apart under the strain. Britain’s National Health Service remains a cultural icon—a symbol of excellent, egalitarian care since its founding more than seven decades ago. Yet its success was hardly guaranteed, as Andrew Seaton makes clear in this elegantly written, highly original history of an institution that survived numerous crises to become a model for the democratic welfare state and the very antithesis of the health inequities we face today as Americans. A brilliant, thought-provoking portrait.”—David M. Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Polio As is now typical of these occasions, the anniversary will also feature a heavy dose of anxiety about the NHS’s future, particularly in a year when waiting lists have grown to some of their longest on record and the official metrics of public satisfaction with the care provided by the service are dipping (even if support for the principles behind the NHS model remains solid). The NHS has not always been on a pedestal

Broadcasts

Ros Turnbull is a trainee Doctor in A&E working in a system which leaves little time for empathy but then a diagnosis changes everything. Al Smith's two part drama examines the NHS from the viewpoint of a Doctor who becomes a patient. Hardman’s book, in fact, is full of excellent stories about politicians, including Barbara Castle and the strike – purely on political principle, and not for more money – in the private wing at Charing Cross Hospital in 1974. Labour was clearly at loggerheads with the National Union of Public Employees, who called it the Fulham Hilton, in trying to resolve the issue amicably. (I was a junior doctor around the corner at Hammersmith Hospital, and knew nothing about it all.) This scene was not uncommon after health care became free at the point of access. In 1947, Queen Charlotte’s [Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital] admitted just over 3,000 in-patients, a figure that rose by 17 percent during 1950–51 alone. Administrators fretted over how ‘the cramped facilities’ were ‘being strained to the utmost’. But, for Campion, queuing became an important illustration of the NHS’s sense of equity. ‘Each lays some piece of property in the seat when she leaves it, to stake a claim’, she noted, ‘and while she is up there the head of the queue moves, we all move, ostentatiously pushing this jetsam before us, as if to demonstrate that we, too, know that fair’s fair’. But how did the NHS become what it is today? In this wide-ranging history, Andrew Seaton examines the full story of the NHS. He traces how the service has changed and adapted, bringing together the experiences of patients, staff from Britain and abroad, and the service's wider supporters and opponents. He explains not only why it survived the neoliberalism of the late twentieth century but also how it became a key marker of national identity.