Eighty-Five Not Out: Essays to Honour Sir George Godber

Ed Stephen Lock King Edward's Hospital Fund for London, pounds sterling5, pp 78 ISBN 1–85717–071–7

This brief collection of essays from a seminar celebrating the 85th birthday of Sir George Godber contains more ideas about the National Health Service than many heavy tomes. Although the emphasis is on how the present can inform the future, the book's perspective matches the scale of Sir George's career in government. This started in the pre- war pre-NHS Ministry of Health and extended over a third of a century until 1973, when he retired after 13 years as Chief Medical Officer. Judging by his own contribution to the seminar, entitled “Medicine in society now and in the future,” the Mount Godber volcano is still far from extinct. It is therefore right and proper that in this review his reflections on …