Published 24 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2468
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2468

News

Championing the champion

Geoff Watts

1 London

At 71 some doctors might be thinking about retirement. Not so George Alberti, former president of the Royal College of Physicians and newly appointed champion on violence against women. Geoff Watts talks to him

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"A sort of Geordie lad," one longstanding colleague described him. "And a man who doesn’t mince his words—occasionally to his disadvantage." From a sometime junior comes an even more direct comment: "There’s no bullshit with George. He likes pricking bubbles. A man who’s unimpressed by pretension."

While it might be difficult to be on the receiving end of such straight talking, these qualities have served the Geordie George in question, Professor George Alberti, amply: he has held professorial chairs, led national and international bodies, been president of the Royal College of Physicians, and been crowned as a medical tsar. And, at 71, the long march continues with his recent appointment to lead a task force on violence against women.

Geordie lad he may be, but it’s not exactly in the genes. The Albertis (not, as I’d wrongly assumed, a product of Italian ancestry) are actually German Jewish by origin; the . . . [Full text of this article]


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