Bedside Reading

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I'm delighted to welcome Ian Seymour to Bedside Reading to discuss the first two novels in Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series: Tales of the City and More Tales of the City.
These are books I have returned to repeatedly throughout my adult life, and each time I revisit them, I discover something new to love. Rich in warmth, humour, compassion, and humanity, Maupin's novels continue to resonate decades after their original publication.
One of the great pleasures of this conversation was discovering just how much Ian also loves these books. Together, we explore what makes the series so enduring and why the residents of 28 Barbary Lane continue to feel so relevant today.
As well as celebrating these brilliant novels, we reflect on what they can teach us about community, belonging, identity, and acceptance. We discuss their significance not only as readers and lovers of literature, but also as doctors, considering how the stories might shape our understanding of the people and communities we serve.
Whether you're revisiting these books or discovering them for the first time, this conversation is a celebration of a series that has touched generations of readers and continues to offer insight, comfort, and joy.

Pride in Practice
We discuss the Pride in Practice programme during the episode. Pride in Practice is an LGBTQ+ inclusion programme designed to support primary care services in improving the experiences of LGBTQ+ patients.
Find out more here: https://lgbt.foundation/help/pride-in-practice/

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I do love an unputdownable page-turner, especially when it's dystopian feminist fiction, and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami delivers on every front.
In this episode of Bedside Reading, I'm delighted to welcome Victoria Sweetmore to the podcast to discuss this compelling and thought-provoking novel. What begins as a gripping speculative thriller quickly opens up into a rich exploration of power, autonomy, surveillance, identity, discrimination, and the ways in which systems can shape and constrain our lives.
The Dream Hotel is one of those rare books that manages to be both intensely readable and deeply unsettling. As the story unfolds, it raises questions that linger long after the final page, inviting readers to reflect on the balance between safety and freedom, the use of data and technology, and what it means to be judged for who we are or who we might become.
Victoria and I explore the novel's many layers, discussing not only what makes it such an accomplished work of fiction, but also the wider themes and conversations it inspires.
Whether you're a fan of dystopian fiction, feminist literature, or simply love a novel that gives you plenty to think about, this is a book well worth discovering.

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A really warm welcome back today to somebody who I always really enjoy talking to. I'm delighted to have Ben Tyler here today to talk about Hungry by Katriona O'Sullivan, which is Katriona O'Sullivan's second memoir which addresses topics around body shaming, hunger for food, for love, for achievement.

Ben has a really fascinating career, including a specialist interest in obesity medicine. So we're using this book as a jumping off point today to think about obesity, stigma, shame, and so much more.  I absolutely loved the book Hungry, but I've loved it even more after talking to Ben, and I hope you'll enjoy our conversation too.

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A warm welcome today to Dr. Alan Saxon, a retired general surgeon from Chicago and the USA and author of Training in Charity, which is an absolutely brilliant medical novel in the genre of something like the pit or ER casualty. It has appeal to people like me who are medical educators and fascinated by the way that medical students in the US were taught in the 1970s compared with how we teach in the UK now but  is also for anyone who loves stories and the sense of humanity and character development. It's a really lovely novel, and I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed talking to Alan about it today.

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A warm welcome today to Pete Aird, who is here to talk about Henry Normal and Angela Pell's wonderful memoir, A Normal Family: Everyday Adventures with Our Autistic Son.

This is a book which absolutely blew me away. I couldn't put it down.  I have adored Henry Normal's poetry for quite some time, and it was a really amazing window into the lives of two people, very successful TV people, and and Henry also as a poet, recognising that their son was going to be different to how they had imagined that he was going to be. They explore the challenges of bringing up a young person who is autistic and has a learning disability and the changes that that has required in them, the feelings that they have had and a really brutally honest portrayal of what it is to love and cherish and parent somebody who doesn't always give anything very much back to you and who you love so very much, want to protect, but don't have all of the tools to parent because the books are all based on a "normal" child.