James Mudie Blackie - Hospital Diaries: A first hand account at the dawn of the NHS

Summer, 1950. James Mudie Blackie is unwell and is admitted to Edgware General Hospital. It’s the dawn of the NHS and he knows he has a long road to recovery. He is in no doubt that he will recover. But what will he find there? How will he react in the face of unknown challenges? What will everyday life be like? To while away the time, he starts to keep a diary. A raw, unfiltered first-hand account, in his own handwriting, documenting just what it’s like to be in a large North London Hospital, as the newly formed NHS struggles to find its feet in post-war austerity Britain. It’s an account of courage, optimism and indomitable human spirit. And for James’s grandchildren, it’s a chance to get to know him, and the Britain he lived in, in a way they never imagine possible - a direct communication across the years from the Grandad they never knew. In the England of 1950, life for ordinary people like Jim Blackie was shaped by the aftermath of World War II - essentially a period of recovery, change, and adjustment to a new societal order. The UK was doing its best to rebuild from the devastation of the war, and although the population was adjusting to peacetime, many of the old wartime constraints and restrictions - like rationing - were still in place. Life was marked by a mixture of austerity, optimism for the future, and a yearning for normality after the chaos and sacrifices of the 1940s. Fate meant that Jim wasn’t to be allowed normality that year, but through everything his optimism somehow remained undimmed. For Jim, making the best of things was to prove especially challenging. But he never gave up - his diaries attest to that. While James Mudie Blackie is the author of the diaries at the heart of this volume, the book itself has been curated by three of his grandchildren - Adam Blackie, Alison Tolfree (nee Oxenford) and John Oxenford - as a tribute to the grandfather they never knew. ALL proceeds from the sale of the eBook, Paperback and Hardback editions will be donated to: Bowel Cancer UK - The UK’s leading bowel cancer charity Webpage - www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk