Faber & Faber

Hugh Selbourne's Diaries from the early 1960s provide a fascinating insight into the worlds of medicine, patients and society as a whole, but also into the mind of a man and father who was physician, bibliophile and diarist. Now reissued in Faber Finds, here David Selbourne reminds us of its appeal, shedding light on why it has become an enduring favourite for many, including Hilary Mantel.

My father Hugh Selbourne, physician, bibliophile and diarist, died in August 1973. His library was subsequently transferred for safekeeping to a university, but at the family home in the wake of his death his scrupulously kept medical observations and reports on his patients were at risk of disposal; his diaries, whose contents were unknown to the family and which he maintained until a fortnight before his passing, stood in his study. I took away the reports and diaries - covering more than 20 years of wry comment on the human condition (in sickness and health) - and eventually selected at random the years 1960 to 1963 for the book which became A Doctor's Life.
 
It was a labour both of love and discovery: the discovery of the thoughts, feelings and judgments of a private man, a man both deeply caring and sometimes intimidating. But the world of his diaries is easily entered; in particular, hypochondriacs - of whom I am one - seem to have relished his descriptions and diagnoses of illness and complaint, real and imagined. About imaginary illness, he could be brusque as well as witty: a patient with aches and pains which moved from place to place was suffering, he said, from a 'wandering fart'. I also recall, as a boy, asking him why one of his patients had died. The question irritated him. 'His heart stopped beating', he replied.
 
The first Cape edition of the book has been, at times, the most borrowed of my books from public libraries, and I am glad that Faber Finds has seen fit to re-issue it; today, such a work would not be published de novo as the world of imaginative publishing declines. His social and medical observations after 1963, which grew in depth as his own health deteriorated - for several years he was iller than most of his patients - remain unseen. Yet I think he would have been content with this volume; for he did not believe that his writing, usually done when the house was asleep, would see the light of day at all.