In Island Dreams, Gavin Francis examines our collective fascination with islands. He blends stories of his own travels with psychology, philosophy and great voyages from literature, shedding new light on the importance of islands and isolation in our collective consciousness. Comparing the life of freedom of thirty years of extraordinary travel from the Faroe Islands to the Aegean, from the Galapagos to the Andaman Islands with a life of responsibility as a doctor, community member and parent approaching middle age, Island Dreams riffs on the twinned poles of rest and motion, independence and attachment, never more relevant than in today's perennially connected world. Illustrated with maps throughout, this is a celebration of human adventures in the world and within our minds.

"It is difficult to read this engaging memoir without a smile on one's face . . . moments of sheer joy . . . [a] mesmerizing and memorable book." —The Economist Chosen as a Book of the Year by the Scotsman, the Financial Times, and the Sunday Herald Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica—so remote that it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter. Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Following penguins throughout the year—from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness—Francis explores...

A journey through the far north from the Shetland Islands to Greenland and beyond: "A wonder-voyage . . . often beautiful" (Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland). . The stark, vast beauty of the remote landscape of Arctic Europe has been the focus of human exploration for thousands of years. In this striking blend of travel writing, history, and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern fringes of Europe. His journey begins in the Shetland Islands, takes him to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and Lapland. Following in the footsteps of the area's early pioneers, the author observes how the region has adapted to the twenty-first century, offering insight into the lives of people he encounters along the way. As with all the best travel writing, True North is an engaging, compassionate tale of self-discovery, blending historical and contemporary narratives. "His nuanced, often witty,...

An Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Irish Times and Scotsman 2021 Non-Fiction Highlight'Well written, often entertaining and occasionally deeply moving; an unmissable account of a year we will all try too hard to forget.' The Times'Inspiring. I can't recommend it too strongly. You will learn a lot from it, and you will find much more that is encouraging.' Allan Massie, ScotsmanIntensive Care is about how coronavirus emerged, spread across the world and changed all of our lives forever. But it's not, perhaps, the story you expect. Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic arrived in our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their...

We assume we know our bodies intimately, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory, an enigma of bone and muscle, neurons and synapses. How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to well-being, or the why the foot holds the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the hidden pathways of the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels.Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in life and in death. When assessing a young woman with paralysis of the face, Francis reflects on the age-old difficulty artists have had in capturing human expression. A veteran of the war in Iraq suffers a shoulder injury that Homer first...