Flying a desk

A hospital chief executive once sadly remarked to me, “Very few doctors can think at my level.” I remember trying to ignore the gesture his hand was making, rising as he said “my level.” This was in the 1980s, when the idea that a hospital secretary was higher than a consultant was mildly irritating. Today it is a given, and doctors are being encouraged to aspire to becoming a chief executive.⇑

That ambition never crossed my mind, perhaps because I grew up in the wrong era. My favourite childhood reading was …