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To Provide All People book cover
To Provide All People
A Poem in the Voice of the NHS
2018
First Published
4.33
Average Rating
124
Number of Pages

July 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service Act. Owen Sheers, the author of Pink Mist and the BAFTA nominated The Green Hollow, has created a virtuosic 'film-poem' to coincide with the Vox Pictures/BBC production broadcast to mark the occasion. To Provide All People is the intimate story of the N.H.S in British society today. Depicting 24 hours in the service, with a regional hospital at the centre of the action, the poem charts an emotional and philosophical map of the N.H.S against the personal experiences that lie its heart; from patients to surgeons, porters to midwives. This is a world of transformative pains, triumphs, losses and celebrations that joins us all in our universal experiences of health and sickness, birth and death, regardless of race, gender or wealth. Based upon over 70 hours of interviews, the work is punctuated with the historical narrative of the birth of the N.H.S Act - from its origins in a local miners' scheme in Tredegar in Wales, through multiple hearings, amendments and battles with the press, the B.M.A and the Conservative party, to its coming into effect in July 1948. To Provide All People is a work that excavates what the N.H.S. represents and means - on a personal and national level - and paints an authentic, tonal picture of a rare social phenomenon, illuminating with exquisite sensitivity and power why the ethos at its heart should always be protected.

Avg Rating
4.33
Number of Ratings
40
5 STARS
50%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
10%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
3%
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Author

Owen Sheers
Owen Sheers
Author · 13 books
OWEN SHEERS is a poet, author and playwright. His first novel, Resistance, was translated into ten languages and adapted into a film. The Dust Diaries, his Zimbabwean nonfiction narrative, won the Wales Book of the Year Award. His awards for poetry and drama include the Somerset Maugham Award for Skirrid Hill, the Hay Festival Medal for Poetry and Wales Book of the Year Award for Pink Mist, and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award for his play The Two Worlds of Charlie F. His most recent novel is I Saw a Man, which was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger. He lives in Wales with his wife and daughter. He has been a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow and is currently Professor in Creativity at Swansea University.
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