
The Edinburgh Health and Medical Humanities Network warmly invites you to join their inaugural event. Please save the date for Monday 19 June 2023, from 2pm to 4pm, in the Seminar Room of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.
In-person and virtual tickets can be booked at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intensive-care-and-covid-in-conversation-with-gavin-francis-tickets-654774005677
During this in-person seminar, we are delighted to have Dr Gavin Francis, doctor and author of eight books of non-fiction, as our guest speaker. Francis will discuss his book Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & a Pandemic, which delves into the true cost and consequences of the virus, exploring its profound impact on every aspect of life. It will also be an opportunity to discuss his most recent work: Sir Thomas Browne: the Opium of Time, which explores the enduring influence of Sir Thomas Browne and how his insights continue to resonate with contemporary writers, doctors, and readers.
About Intensive Care:
Intensive Care is about how coronavirus emerged, spread across the world and changed all of our lives forever. But it’s not, perhaps, the story you expect.
Dr Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic overwhelmed our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global disaster. And he saw how the true cost of the virus was measured not just in infections, or deaths, or ITU beds, but in the consequences of the measures taken against it.
In this deeply personal account of nine months spent caring for a society in crisis, Francis will take you from rural village streets to local clinics and communal city stairways. And in telling this story, he reveals others: of loneliness and hope, illness and recovery, and of what we can achieve when we care for each other.
Dr Gavin Francis is a GP in Edinburgh and author of eight acclaimed books of non-fiction. True North: Travels in Arctic Europe (2008); Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins (2012) which was SMIT Scottish Book of the Year 2013 and shortlisted for the Costa, Ondaatje, Banff, & Saltire Prizes; Adventures in Human Being (2015), which won Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2015, was the Observer’s Science Book of the Year, and was a winner in the BMA Book Awards; Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change (2018), which was a book of the year in the Sunday Times and the Scotsman. Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession (2020) was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year; Intensive Care: a GP, a Community, & a Pandemic was published in January 2021 and was a notable book of the year in The Herald, Scotsman, Financial Times, Observer, Irish Times, and New Statesman. Recovery – The Lost Art of Convalescence (2022) was a Sunday Times bestseller, and Sir Thomas Browne: the Opium of Time will be published in spring 2023. His books have been translated into nineteen languages.
This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and to avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee everyone a place. Admission is on a first come, first served basis.
Accessibility: This event will take place at IASH, 2 Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9NW. Please see a map here: https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/location
The Seminar Room is on the first floor, and unfortunately IASH does not have a lift. If you have mobility issues and would like to discuss access, please contact iash@ed.ac.uk as soon as possible. Virtual tickets are available.