Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best Loved Institution

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A provocative, deeply-researched explanation of how the NHS—seemingly in perpetual crisis—has endured over the past 75 years. Seaton’s study is an important corrective to overarching accounts of the triumph of neoliberalism in Britain, a testament to the power of unintended consequences in policy-making, and a must-read about the strange survival of social democracy and everyday communalism into the twenty-first century.”—Deborah Cohen, author of Last Call at the Hotel Imperial But how did the NHS become what it is today? In this wide-ranging history, Andrew Seaton examines the full story of the NHS. He traces how the service has changed and adapted, bringing together the experiences of patients, staff from Britain and abroad, and the service's wider supporters and opponents. He explains not only why it survived the neoliberalism of the late twentieth century but also how it became a key marker of national identity. A rising tide of liberalising capitalism has sluiced the NHS but somehow not dissolved its collectivist foundations. That makes it a miraculous bastion or an infuriating relic depending on which end of the ideological spectrum you ask. For most people in the middle it is just there, an immovable feature of the landscape, like a mighty river or majestic forest. It might be vulnerable to spoilage and neglect, but no one imagines it could be erased and no politician who wants to get elected will be caught suggesting such a thing. Florence dedicated her life to helping those in need. She was a trailblazer who led a group of nurses to care for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War and developed revolutionary views about hygiene and sanitation. Hailed as a heroine by Queen Victoria and the British people upon her return from the front, Florence Nightingale went on to establish the Nightingale Training School for Nurses and despite chronic illness, continued in her efforts to reform healthcare at home and abroad from her London salon. Andrew has discussed his research on BBC Radio 4's 'Start the Week', BBC Radio 5 Live, the HistoryExtra podcast, and The Majority Report. He has delivered large public lectures at Mansfield College, Oxford and Newcastle University, as well as smaller talks at bookstores, libraries, and literary festivals.

All our events remain free and open to all, but pre-booking is required. Bookings for this lecture will open at 10.00am on 28 September. Blair claimed (incorrectly) in 1998 that Britain was ‘one of the few countries where they feel your pulse before they feel your wallet if you collapse in the street’. For BBC Radio 4, coverage will begin with Dr Kevin Fong and Isabel Hardman in a special episode of Start the Week alongside GP Phil Whitaker and the historian Andrew Seaton. Also that week, a one-off documentary The NHS at 75: Covid Memories will reflect on the pandemic through the experience of health service staff. In a Newsnight special marking the NHS’s 75th anniversary, Kirsty Wark asks the big questions about the future of UK healthcare. Broadcasting live from Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, Kirsty will be joined by TV doctor Xand van Tullekan and people working at the heart of the health service, to ask is the NHS on life support or fit for the future? BBC OneThere is some truth in the assertion, but the NHS tells a different story. New Labour escalated the pre-existing welfare nationalism around the NHS to new heights. Its leading figures never stopped invoking ‘Our NHS’ in speeches and they made pointed comparisons with other countries. I have just published my first book, Our NHS: A History of Britain’s Best-Loved Institution with Yale University Press. Hardman’s book, in fact, is full of excellent stories about politicians, including Barbara Castle and the strike – purely on political principle, and not for more money – in the private wing at Charing Cross Hospital in 1974. Labour was clearly at loggerheads with the National Union of Public Employees, who called it the Fulham Hilton, in trying to resolve the issue amicably. (I was a junior doctor around the corner at Hammersmith Hospital, and knew nothing about it all.) In its 75 th year, the National Health Service is arguably facing its most challenging battles yet.

Seaton’s) analysis is sharp and compelling and makes a considerable contribution to the scholarship surrounding what he terms ‘Britain’s best-loved institution’”.Paediatrics: Dr Conor Doherty, Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, NHS GG&C and Susan Kafka, Advanced Pharmacist - Paediatric Antimicrobials & Medicine, NHS GG&C An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, exploring its surprising survival-and the people who have kept it running

Before joining UCL in October 2023, Andrew was the Plumer Junior Research Fellow in History at St Anne's College, University of Oxford. He trained in both the UK and the USA, gaining a doctorate in History from New York University (NYU) in 2021. Hardman is a meticulous journalist with a gift for storytelling. She doesn’t let her admiration for the NHS as both a political achievement and a healthcare provider impede the exposition of its flaws. She modulates her tone with subtle precision, using controlled fury for scandals born of callous neglect and ironic detachment when transporting the reader into cabinet discussions where a health secretary’s vanity conflicts with a chancellor’s parsimony. Live is giving over 11 hours of output to their audience - to tell us about their experiences of the NHS - good, bad and future concerns. An engaging, inclusive history of the NHS, exploring its surprising survival—and the people who have kept it running. Britain’s National Health Service remains a cultural icon—a symbol of excellent, egalitarian care since its founding more than seven decades ago. Yet its success was hardly guaranteed, as Andrew Seaton makes clear in this elegantly written, highly original history of an institution that survived numerous crises to become a model for the democratic welfare state and the very antithesis of the health inequities we face today as Americans. A brilliant, thought-provoking portrait”.The Welshman’s famous statement that the service represented the ‘envy of the world’ was not empty grandstanding, but rather a serious statement about how Britain might inspire others in the organisation of medical services and regain international influence at a moment when decolonisation undercut older claims to authority. Both books describe party political wrangling without overt partisanship, although Seaton’s leftward tilt becomes increasingly clear in later chapters. It is explicit in his conclusion – that the tenacity of the NHS in fending off marketisation might serve as a model for the resurgence of egalitarian, social democratic politics in Britain. Scottish Association of Medical Directors: Dr Scott Davidson, Deputy Medical Director for Acute Services, NHS GG&C I also wanted to write a book that was both academically rigorous and would possess cross-over appeal to a general audience. Yale University Press seemed the perfect fit in this regard, allowing for ample space for both the things that academics tend to care about (references and scholarly debates) and the things that the general public prioritise (accessible prose and human stories). Among Yale’s titles in British history, Deborah Cohen’s Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions (2006) , Edmond Smith’s Merchants: The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire (2021), and Sasha Handley’s, Sleep in Early Modern England (2016) all provided examples of how to achieve such a balance. With the help of my editor, Jo Godfrey, and the encouragement of colleagues at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, where I completed the book as a postdoctoral researcher, I rewrote the manuscript and added two new chapters that more concretely brought the book up to the present.

New Labour took the trade union tradition of marking ‘NHS Day’ on 5th July and turned it into a national jamboree. In recent years, the NHS has frequently laid at the heart of Labour’s messaging – encompassing party political broadcasts and commemorative tea towels. Comedian and broadcaster Dr Phil Hammond's How I Ruined Medicine draws on his own experiences to ask if his investigations into medical malpractice have done more harm than good for healthcare overall. Chaired by Dr Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History andCo-Chair, Public Lectures CommitteeAs part of his Leverhulme Fellowship, Andrew is researching a second project in environmental history, provisionally titled The Ends of Coal: Living with British Carbon. This work is a wide-ranging history of the British coal industry in the twentieth century, exploring its legacies on human health, pollution, decolonisation, political economy, and environmentalism. Selected publications