Bedside Reading

Send us Fan Mail
It's a real honour today to welcome Stephen Unwin to Bedside Reading. Stephen is a theatre director by trade. He's also a brilliant writer. We're here today to talk about his phenomenal book, Beautiful Lives, How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong, which is an incredibly accessible, brilliant page-turner of a book, which runs through some of the history of how society have seen, judged, and categorised people.

It's about othering. It's about ableism. It's a real call to action for all of us to think about the way that we do things and the way that we see people And the fact that everybody must be human first and not labelled, categorised and pushed into a corner somewhere.

It is an utterly, utterly brilliant book. And I have absolutely loved talking to Stephen about it today.

Send us Fan Mail
There might be a little bit of squealy fangirling from me today... I'm delighted to welcome Lee David to the podcast. Lee is a GP by background. She's also a CBT therapist and I remember her from when I was a GP registrar, when she introduced the concept of 15-minute CBT and ran lots of amazing workshops around this.
Lee also hosts an amazing podcast of her own but we're here today to talk about a book called Defy by Sunita Sah which is about why we just go along with things why sometimes, even when all of our body is crying out to us, "no, no, no, this is a terrible mistake" we agree to things. we think about how we can start to recognise that tension and to make different choices keeping our actions aligned with our values.
Lee is an absolutely wonderful speaker and she's somebody who really makes me think and often when I listen to her podcast and and it's been a real delight to host her online today and talk about this brilliant book.

Follow her podcast "The Choice Space" here: https://thechoicespace.co.uk/podcast/

We mentioned NHS Practitioner Health find them here https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/

Send us Fan Mail
I've got a fabulous guest today, Neonatologist and poet Beth Osmond, talking about her gorgeous collection, Hatchery. This is an utterly, utterly gorgeous collection of beautiful poems, mainly inspired by Beth's career as a Neonatologist.

It is thought provoking, it is funny.,it is gentle, it is deep. There are so many things I could say about it. It is utterly, utterly lovely. Please, please buy yourself a copy. You can buy this direct from the publishers or you could obviously and nip down to your local bookshop and buy it that way instead if you would prefer.

It has been such a joy to talk to Beth and to hear a couple of the poems. It was very difficult for us to choose which two she should share. And there are so many lovely ones, but I'm hoping we will leave you wanting more, loving these poems and wanting to buy your own copy.

Buy your copy now: https://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/2026/05/launching-hatchery.html

Send us Fan Mail
A very warm welcome today to Emma Vardy to talk about Pearl Buck's The Child Who Never Grew, a memoir. I'm releasing it this week because this week on 28th of June, it is International PKU Day. As you will find there is a lot to think about in terms of phenylketonuria and also the fact that eventually, after the end of this book, and and and when science had advanced, Pearl S. Buck's daughter, Carol, who she writes very movingly and beautifully about in this book, was recognized to have PKU. In a time when nobody really knew about it, nobody knew about low protein diets, there weren't the drugs, and the outcomes for children with PKU was incredibly, incredibly different to how it is at the moment.

Many of us have heard of PKU. We think of it as an autosomal recessive condition. We know that it's tested for in the newborn blood spot test. We know that it's something to do with protein. And every so often you pick up a can of a fizzy drink and it says "a source of phenylalanine" and we think, "oh, what's all that all about?" I hope that not only might I persuade you to read The Child That Never Grew and and to think about Pearl's experiences, and but also hoping my conversation with Emma will give you some really good going accidental CPD on the subject of PKU.
https://www.espku.org/2026/05/04/international-pku-day-2026-breaking-the-silence-on-mental-health-in-pku/
https://nspku.org/

Send us Fan Mail
Natalie Adler's debut novel, Waiting on a Friend, is a joy. It is a story about a young woman, Renata, living in New York's East Village in the early 80s during the AIDS crisis.

There are stories of people.  There is injustice. There are ghosts. I don't normally like ghosts but I love the ghost angle of this book. If you're looking for a novel, which is a cross between The Great Believers, Rent, and It's a Sin, this is the book for you. It is brilliantly funny. It is moving. There's so much to think about. And it's been an absolute joy to talk to Natalie herself about it today for one of my Pride Month special episodes.