John Berger
Ways of Learning
Will be published approx. on 6. August 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-0-19-899418-3 (ISBN)
Description
Iona Heath relates the importance that John Berger's work and friendship had on her working life as a GP. It includes extracts from letters that span 20 years of her correspondence with John Berger.
In this book, Iona Heath writes about reading John Berger's writing over more than 50 years and her friendship and correspondence with him over the best part of 20 years. Dr Heath found that both of these interacted profoundly with her work as a general practitioner in a deprived urban area in London. For Iona Heath, general practice is a quite extraordinary undertaking: every working day, sitting with a succession of unique individuals, each worried about some aspect of their health or life circumstances, many burdened by unspoken fears, and each seeking some form of answer. Starting with A Fortunate Man, when she was an ignorant but hopeful undergraduate medical student, she found reading John Berger on any subject had something new to tell her about the aspirations and detail of her work: clues about how to look and how to listen and much else. Later when they started to correspond, Iona Heath found herself in the privileged position of being able to check her understanding directly with the writer and on each occasion found deeper levels of awareness and insight. She is convinced that reading John Berger made her a better doctor.
In this book, Iona Heath writes about reading John Berger's writing over more than 50 years and her friendship and correspondence with him over the best part of 20 years. Dr Heath found that both of these interacted profoundly with her work as a general practitioner in a deprived urban area in London. For Iona Heath, general practice is a quite extraordinary undertaking: every working day, sitting with a succession of unique individuals, each worried about some aspect of their health or life circumstances, many burdened by unspoken fears, and each seeking some form of answer. Starting with A Fortunate Man, when she was an ignorant but hopeful undergraduate medical student, she found reading John Berger on any subject had something new to tell her about the aspirations and detail of her work: clues about how to look and how to listen and much else. Later when they started to correspond, Iona Heath found herself in the privileged position of being able to check her understanding directly with the writer and on each occasion found deeper levels of awareness and insight. She is convinced that reading John Berger made her a better doctor.
Reviews / Votes
A wonderful book about looking and learning, art and medicine, memory and love. It transports the reader into the intimacies of John Berger's thinking and writing, and is a unique, moving testament to an enduring friendship. * Gavin Francis, GP and author of Adventures in Human Being * I loved it: not only a profound reflection on medicine and what it really means to enquire, to listen and to look, but also a love letter to friendship and the joy that flows from a meeting of minds. * Polly Morland, Author of A Fortunate Woman * A warm and erudite account of a richly inspiring friendship. * Leah Hazard, Midwife and Author of Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began * While the doctor/patient relationship might be encapsulated in brief consultations - just as the still photograph breaks the flow of events - the healer's continuity of care is a potent medicine in itself. Heath's engagement with Berger's work is itself an important continuity in her career. * Jane Goodall, Inside Story * Fascinating ... through excerpts and anecdotes, [Heath] traces the impact Berger had on her development - and offers us the chance to be influenced in our turn. * Phil Whitaker, British Journal of General Practitioners * Berger's letters to Heath ... offer an intimate look at the revered writer, and the meditations on how his art criticism influenced Heath's outlook on medicine show how readers sometimes use texts in ways the author never anticipated. Fans of Berger will appreciate the close-up portrait of the man behind the work. * Publishers Weekly *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
10
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-899418-3 (9780198994183)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Iona Heath is a retired inner city general practitioner (1975-2010) and past President of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners (2009-2012). She has written regularly for the British Medical Journal and has contributed essays to many other medical journals across the world. She has been particularly interested to explore the nature of general practice, the importance of medical generalism, issues of justice and liberty in relation to health care, the corrosive influence of the medical industrial complex and the commercialization of medicine, and the challenges posed by disease-mongering, the care of the dying, and violence within families.
Content
Part One: Beginnings 1: Meeting 2: Becoming a doctor 3: Reading and re-reading Part Two: Ideas 4: Commonplacing 5: This door which opens on to what? 6: Looking 7: Seeing 8: Listening 9: Connecting 10: Touching 11: Thinking 12: Words 13: Time 14: Space and place 15: Hope 16: Memory 17: Imagination 18: Pain 19: Violence 20: Justice and solidarity 21: Fear 22: Doubt 23: Death 24: Angels Farewell