5x15

In July, 5x15 is thrilled to welcome the highly acclaimed and best-selling authors Polly Morland and Rachel Clarke, for a vital conversation about medicine, the NHS and the fascinating story behind Morland's new book A FORTUNATE WOMAN: A Country Doctor's Story, a Sunday Times bestseller that was shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Polly Morland was clearing her late mother’s house when she found a battered paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it, she was astonished to see reproduced in it an old photograph of the remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate Man, John Berger’s classic 1967 account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling story, and how the tale of the old doct