Neal Maskrey PublishNation, 2024, PB, 486pp, £15.42, 978-1917293754

Most doctors do more good than harm, but which doctors do the most good? The GP, following patients through the downs of life and rarely seeing the ups, treating their acute illnesses and staying with them when illnesses become multiple, complex, and chronic? Or the doctor who wants to do good on a larger scale and who deliberately enters the messy world of health economics and allocation in the hope of creating a fairer and evidence-based system? Or the educator, teaching generations of health professionals how to shape their skills and personalities to practice better, kinder medicine? Neal Maskrey has been all of these kinds of doctor over several decades. Now he has become an author.

His book covers the three aspects of medicine I’ve mentioned and more. The task of weaving these threads together took him 10 years. The result is one of the richest books ever to come out of general practice, or UK medicine in general.

It seems almost old-fashioned to refer to ‘UK medicine’, and it would sound downright archaic to call …