Breathtaking

How does it feel to confront a pandemic from the inside, one patient at a time? To bridge the gulf between a perilously unwell patient in quarantine and their distraught family outside? To be uncertain whether the protective equipment you wear fits the science or the size of the government stockpile? To strive your utmost to maintain your humanity even while barricaded behind visors and masks?

Rachel is a palliative care doctor who looked after the most gravely unwell patients on the Covid-19 wards of her hospital. Amid the tensions, fatigue and rising death toll, she witnessed the courage of patients and NHS staff alike in conditions of unprecedented adversity. For all the bleakness and fear, she found that moments that could stop you in your tracks abounded. People who rose to their best, upon facing the worst, as a microbe laid waste to the population.

Her new book, Breathtaking, is an unflinching insider's account of medicine in the time of coronavirus. Drawing on testimony from nursing, acute and intensive care colleagues - as well as, crucially, her patients - Clarke argue that this age of contagion has inspired a profound attentiveness to - and gratitude for - what matters most in life.

About the Author

Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a television journalist and documentary maker. She now specialises in palliative medicine, caring deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible - and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change.

Rachel is the author of three Sunday Times bestselling books. Breathtaking reveals what life was really like inside the NHS during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Dear Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize, is based on her work in a hospice. It explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. Your Life in My Hands documents life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline.