A Fortunate Man by John Berger

Gene Feder

‘Landscapes can be deceptive.

Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting

For the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which

Their struggles, achievements and accidents take place.’

So starts a book about a country doctor written 37 years ago by John Berger, with photos by Jean Mohr, about the doctor and his patients in the Forest of Dean. A Fortunate Man, intimately depicts his relationships with individuals and the community in which he lives and works. Berger describes these complex relationships without sentimentality, linking them to ideas about doctoring, suffering, time, and what it is to be human. I remember reading the book as a medical student and thinking: this is why I wanted to become a doctor.

Does A Fortunate Man still have something to say to new generations of doctors and patients after breathtaking changes in medicine and in the health service? From 11 April to 18 May there will be a season on the South Bank in London celebrating the work of John Berger. This will include an event, supported by the RCGP, based around responses to the book from novelists as patients (or friends/relatives of patients) and from doctors, young and old(er).

More information about the event will be available in the March issue of this Journal and on the RCGP website from mid-January 2005.

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