Congratulations on being shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2024. How does it feel to be shortlisted and what would winning mean to you?
I’m both honoured and astounded to be shortlisted for a prize that has been awarded to so many of my favourite historians. History has the power to reframe the way we understand and discuss the most pressing issues of our present and future. We need organisations like the Wolfson Foundation to promote these contributions. Our NHS was released at the same time as the service’s 75th anniversary – a moment that revealed both popular celebration of its principles and anxiety about its present condition. I hoped to write a history that might say something different about the service than the uncritical celebration or inevitable declinism that we regularly see in the media. It has been wonderful to have spent the last year speaking about its history with audiences in book shops, libraries, and literary festivals. Being shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize offers a chance to have more of those conversations. To win this prize with my first book would be humbling and mean so much to me during a challenging time for universities and the discipline of history.
What was the inspiration behind Our NHS?
Before she retired, my mum worked nights as a cleaner in the National Health Service and two of her sisters were nurses. So, like many other Britons, I grew up with a personal connection to the institution and wanted to know more about its history. Another inspiration for the book came when I watched the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, where dancing nurses and hospital beds gave the NHS a starring role. I asked myself, how did a health service come to form part of a global projection of what it meant to be British? I was also interested in why this part of the welfare state had survived to take on such significance, when other things like mass council housing had fallen away. These were the questions that motivated me to research the book (which began as a doctoral thesis), an endeavour that took me to dozens of archives all over the United Kingdom and overseas.
For someone who is interested in the history of the NHS, what wider content – for example books, places, films – would you recommend?
Luckily (for me), the NHS has always featured in popular culture. When researching the book, I was intrigued by the integral role of film in explaining and promoting the service to the public after its foundation in 1948. The British Film Institute’s (BFI) website has a great collection of these productions that you can watch for free. I would recommend Here’s Health (1948) – a lively drama that sought to show the benefits of the NHS to a rural working-class family. In terms of novels, I loved writing about Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen (1974) which tells the story of a Nigerian woman arriving in the country and her experiences of British life, including a stay on an NHS maternity ward.
Was there a particular writer, book or experience that first made you interested in history?
I’ve always loved history. Like many children, I was drawn to learning about ancient civilisations through things like Horrible Histories. I still have some little metal figurines of Egyptian gods that I bought in a museum when I was about ten. As a teenager, I became more aware of current affairs and started reading political and social histories of the people and places around me. At Exeter College in Exeter, I was lucky to have a wonderful history teacher (Betty Woodfin) who supported my passion for history and encouraged me to study it at university.
The Wolfson Foundation awards grants to a wide variety of museums, historic buildings and landscapes. Do you have a favourite historical place, or a place that has inspired you?
When I was young, my family took me to Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) fairly regularly. I was fascinated by the zoological collections (even if my older sister loves to tell a story of me refusing to walk back through a gallery containing a scary hyena…). The museum also nurtured my love of history. RAMM was renovated in the late 2000s and it’s a fantastic place to spend a couple hours if you’re visiting the city.
Read an extract from Our NHS: A History of Britain’s Best-Loved Institution.
