Archive | 1970s

An honourable designation

Anthony Barker was a small man with a long straggly beard, glasses and a bow-tie. He was one of the most flamboyant figures at St George’s in the late 70s and early 80s. A surgeon by training, he was known as Dr Barker, because although he was a surgeon, he also had a MD.   In […]

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Graduation Day

The last year at medical school was marked by a gathering sense of dread as Finals approached. Although we had had innumerable tests over the years, these were just way marks. Qualification rested entirely on the results of a heavy schedule of written and viva voce exams taken in late May and early June, and […]

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Psychiatric Epiphany Part 3: The winter of discontent

Having decided to become a psychiatrist, I watched the autumn of 1978 fade into the notorious Winter of Discontent, the prelude to Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory. Leaving aside public sector strikes and severe cold weather, rather a lot of significant events in my life happened in the last three months of 1978. My long […]

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Northern Line Part 4. A bucketful of eels

During the two years that I attended King’s College London, I lived with my parents. Our relationship had been turbulent in my mid-teens. There had been pointless battles over hair and clothes, the common intergenerational battleground of the time. These things mattered to them because they retained a fierce working class pride. I thought that […]

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