FROM THE GUEST EDITOR SIMON BARKER

FROM THE GUEST EDITOR

BY SIMON BARKER HEAD OF ENGLISH

I did remark to one of the contributors in the following pages that it was odd for the Head of English to be invited to guest edit a magazine on Meet the Medics; the reply came back that it was not remotely odd. It is indeed true that I have taught very many medics over the years, and written many of their university references.

The RGS has sent more people into the medical professions than into any other. So we faced a colossal problem: the enormous embarrassment of riches on which to draw.

It is a good, but challenging, problem to have! The Chorus to Shakespeare’s Henry V apologises at the outset for the ‘wooden O’ that is the Globe theatre, in being unable to do justice to the immense story that is to follow: for each character on stage ‘On your imaginary forces work’, ‘Into a thousand parts divide one man’ who appears there. And we have to make the same appeal: do not be offended, gentles all, if you are not here. The pages that follow can only be a tiny, representative snapshot.

But what a snapshot it is! ‘Medics’ we are taking in an inclusive way (including dentists, vets, nurses, doctors and other medical professionals). All of that is honoured somewhere in these pages, even if it could not be by an article. The first thing that is especially pleasing is the diversity of story (the only brief was to tell that story from any angle of the writer’s choice), reflected in the diversity of age, gender, ethnicity, specialism, experience. It endorses what Kalum calls ‘the broad church’ of Medicine and Thomas its ‘unrivalled range of opportunity’. It is also moving to read about the varied range in qualities of opportunities and experiences at school that its ONs fondly recall (and of the roll call of teachers who emerge, old and new, who helped to facilitate them). But the other striking thing is the interconnectedness of the stories: how a thread or a name here is picked up somewhere else, which also manages to reflect the team nature of what many of the medics here celebrate in their profession.

It has been a delight to work with the team at school on this issue and with the team of contributors, all of whom willingly gave up precious time. Here is our ‘wooden O’ and, on its stage (as a Shakespeare contemporary puts it), ‘infinite riches in a little room’.