Acknowledgements

The origins of this book go back nearly 10 years. In that time many, many people have helped me with it. I would like to express my appreciation to the following in particular: Steve Collins, sadly no longer with us, for suggesting shortly after I had moved on from the Royal United Hospital in Bath in 2003 that I put my findings and ideas about failure and recovery into an article; Nick Edwards and Alaistair McLelland, at the Health Service Journal, for asking me and helping me to do more and create a series of articles, and for publishing them; Bob Fryer, then head of the NHS University, who when he saw the articles said they were good but a job half done, leading to the NHS University awarding me a Fellowship to turn the ideas into a book; to Wolfson College and the Judge Institute at Cambridge University for hosting me for that Fellowship year (2004–5); to Nick Brearley for astutely pointing out what was missing from my ideas before declining to publish me; to Professor Alison Wolf of King’s College and Professor Terry Young of Brunel University for their detailed and deeply helpful comments; to Sally Holloway, my agent, who guided me and pushed me to make the book more coherent and accessible and helped me find the right publisher; to Gail Samuel, my PA at West Hertfordshire Hospitals who gave huge amounts of her own time and her boundless energy typing up redraft after redraft and transforming the book’s presentation; and, lastly and most importantly, my wife, Naomi, who has consistently, throughout the book’s gestation, been a most insightful and sympathetic reviewer, and has constantly supported and encouraged me, notably at the times when I got really discouraged and might have given up. Naturally, the book’s faults remain mine.

PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The publisher wishes to thank Roy Lilley for permission to use an extract from his blog on pages 46–7.

In some cases we have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material, and we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.