Canongate wins GP Whitaker's 'impassioned' NHS account in five-way auction

Canongate has snapped up What Is a Doctor? by practising GP and medical editor of the New Statesman Phil Whitaker, after triumphing in a five-way auction. 

Editorial director Simon Thorogood acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Andrew Gordon of David Higham Associates. The book will publish in July 2023. 

"What Is a Doctor? will be a vital contribution to the ongoing debate about how we maintain an NHS that is both fit for purpose and free," the synopsis reads. "Using stories and case studies from across his career, Phil Whitaker will offer a portrait of the medical movements, political interference and societal changes that have transformed the role of doctor over the past three decades. 

"Much has altered for the better but, even when based on good intentions, an equal or greater amount has been damaging and threatens the sustainability of the NHS. In examining what it means to be a doctor today this book answers an accompanying question ‘what is a patient?’ – and describes what might yet be done to restore the NHS and its capacity for properly patient-centred care."

Whitaker has been a GP for more than 30 years. He is the author of several books and the winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Betty Trask Award and the RSL Encore Award. 

"The stories in What Is a Doctor? draw on my professional life as a GP and medical commentator together with personal and family experiences of the NHS," he said. "They get to the heart of what we are fast losing in healthcare, and show both how vital and possible it is for this to be regained."

Thorogood said: "Publishing on the 75th anniversary of the creation of the NHS, Phil’s book is a story-led and impassioned look at what it means to be a doctor today, how that role has changed over the past 30 years, and what needs to happen if we’re going to have a thriving NHS for the next 75 years."