Labours of Love

Reviews / Votes

Labours of Love is a fine achievement. It is full of humanity. I found it utterly absorbing and, unpopular though the word is, humbling * Guardian * [Labours of Love] should be compulsory reading for every MP, every manager in the NHS and the care "industry". It is so well written that it is a pleasure to read so it won't be an arduous task for them. Well researched, timely and sees humans as humans not numbers and it's time we all reverted to doing that...Informative, moving and essential, thank you Madeleine Bunting -- Philippa Perry An urgent, searching and vital overview of the landscape of care, published as societies everywhere are waking up to the true value of caring work. Madeleine Bunting has spent five years talking with parents and therapists, doctors and nurses, sons and daughters. The perspectives she gathers are sometimes angry, often tender, always illuminating -- Gavin Francis A moving, forensic and historically grounded examination of how as a society we are falling so badly short in fulfilling our moral responsibilities to each other through life's most difficult passages, The Crisis of Care would have been timely at any point, but never more so than in the epoch-defining circumstances of 2020 as we seek at last to re-define our values -- David Kynaston Labours of Love is a masterpiece. Humane, perceptive, honest, compassionate, wide-ranging, and erudite, it is a profound inquiry into the most important social issue of our time: how we care for those who are not able to care for themselves. It could not be more timely... This brilliant and disturbing book should set the terms for that debate. It should be read by policymakers, health and social care professionals, and anyone who has responsibility for delivering - that is to say, pretty well all of us -- Raymond Tallis Labours of Love arrives at a perfect time: the world seems to have rediscovered the "essential" importance of CARE-but unfortunately is still very bad at 'valuing' and resourcing it. Bunting's terrific book can help change that. It accomplishes a feat in narration-interweaving stories about care that are simultaneously inspirational and tragic -- in hospitals, in GP waiting rooms, in care homes-with facts and analysis about how decades of austerity have put care workers on their knees. It is a denunciation of the crisis of care and a call to arms about reimagining and resourcing it. It cannot be ignored -- Mariana Mazzucato Even before the pandemic, this deeply reflective investigation into the crisis of care in the UK would have merited a wide readership. Now it feels essential... Both heart-breaking and enraging * Bookseller * Bunting's half-decade of research has been both practical and philosophical... I was moved to tears * Observer * Timely... When the coronavirus has finally passed, a primary question for policymakers should be how we can rebuild a stronger, fairer care system ... Bunting's writing on care homes, where she volunteers, feels particularly poignant * Sunday Times * Madeleine Bunting's book couldn't have come at a more important time... This luminous and compelling collection of stories should be required reading for all politicians * Woman & Home magazine * An important and unsettling reminder that we can't afford to wait for the next crisis, because the health system on which we all depend is itself in intensive care' * Independent * Vital and timely * Prospect * Superb... a devastatingly potent call to arms... profoundly beautiful... some of the most lyrical and moving journalism I have ever read * The Lancet * Robustly argued, historically grounded and based on patient listening and observation... feels peculiarly for this moment... Few more powerful or important books on the welfare state have been written since the days of Richard Titmuss' -- David Kynaston * Books of the Year * Caring is what makes us human, Bunting argues. Quite so. The message of 2020 right there * Observer * Labours of Love paints a portrait of the nation today-and how it might be * Jersey Evening Post * A deeply reported book that is more affecting for its lack of sentimentality * Guardian * A tour de force * Financial Times *