Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best Loved Institution

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In this blogpost, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Andrew Seaton gives us an insight into how he went about writing a history of one of Britain’s best-loved institutions. As the government’s national archive for England, Wales and the United Kingdom, The National Archives hold over 1,000 years of the nation’s records for everyone to discover and use. Against the Sacred Cow': NHS Opposition and the Fellowship for Freedom in Medicine', Twentieth Century British History 26, no. This fractures the moral foundations of a service that embedded itself so deeply and so quickly in popular affections precisely because it banished the fear of ill health that a billing service imposed. One of the things that kept me motivated to finish writing the book lay in how the service’s history allowed me to talk about lots of different things, from shifting meanings of class and gender, to Britain’s experience of Commonwealth immigration, to architectural aesthetics or debates in medical economics.

The country that led global trends in privatisation of state assets and whose most electorally successful party makes a fetish of free-market enterprise finds itself also home to one of the world’s most popular and durable socialist institutions. Seaton emphasizes the resilience of the NHS-perpetually "in crisis" and yet perennially enduring-as well as the political values it embodies and the work of those who have tirelessly kept it afloat.The book stitches together government reports with, for instance, photographs of patients in health centres, documentary films about U.

Anenurin Bevan, Minister of Health, on the first day of the NHS (5th July 1948) at Park Hospital, Davyhulme, via University of Liverpool. I show that attitudes, culture, ideas, and activism also matter to the fate of welfare services, alongside administration or finances.The two authors are aligned in their analysis, covering much of the same material and identifying many of the same recurrent patterns: the constant pressure for innovation provoking fear of core NHS principles being abandoned; tension between a consumer culture that increasingly expects customised choice and a system that functions by pooling resources on a principle of collective solidarity; the challenge of imposing minimum standards without the perverse, unintended consequences that rigid targets generate; the simple fact that there is never enough money, but also that more cash is not always the answer and Treasury pockets are not infinitely deep. An expert in the history of modern Britain and the NHS, he received his PhD in history from New York University in 2021.

Unfortunately we cannot offer a refund on custom prints unless they are faulty or we have made a mistake. 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.It was done with astonishing speed in the face of financial constraint, resistance from much of the medical establishment and the Conservative party. Well into the 1970s, unmarried mothers were compelled to give up babies for adoption on the grounds that their condition was proof of moral depravity. That makes it a miraculous bastion or an infuriating relic depending on which end of the ideological spectrum you ask. The Gospel of Wealth and the National Health: The Rockefeller Foundation and Social Medicine in Britain's NHS, 1945-60', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. Both books describe party political wrangling without overt partisanship, although Seaton’s leftward tilt becomes increasingly clear in later chapters.

He is a historian of modern Britain, with particular interests in political history, social history, and the history of medicine and the environment. The colour palette is less varied in Andrew Seaton’s Our NHS, which is a more academic, but still accessible survey of health service history. The waiting list figures for treatment stood at their worst levels on record, strikes among health professionals unfolded across the service, and unknown numbers of NHS staff seemed to be emigrating for better conditions and pay overseas.She doesn’t let her admiration for the NHS as both a political achievement and a healthcare provider impede the exposition of its flaws. It might be vulnerable to spoilage and neglect, but no one imagines it could be erased and no politician who wants to get elected will be caught suggesting such a thing. Britons have clapped for frontline workers and championed the service as a distinctive national achievement. Our NHS has received positive coverage in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Lancet, and The Literary Review.