Iona Heath Oxford University Press, 2024, HB, 192pp, £18.99, 978-0192864239

This book is both fascinating and saddening. The fascinating part is easy enough to explain. Iona Heath, a former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and for 35 years an inner-London GP, has compiled letters, quotations, and reminiscences from her 20-year friendship with John Berger — art and cultural critic, essayist, novelist, and author of A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor.

Berger’s 1967 book, a collaboration with photographer Jean Mohr, rapidly became a classic. It describes the life and work of John Sassall, the pseudonym of a GP in the Forest of Dean. A study of the power of continuity of care and the importance of trust in doctor–patient relationships, A Fortunate Man is regarded by many as having captured the quintessence of the general medical practitioner. It helped Heath as a medical student to decide on general practice as her career path. Yet in 1996, with 20 years’ …