Gavin Francis & Philippe Sands: The Unfragile Mind
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the London Review Bookshop podcast. To find out about our upcoming events, visit londonreviewbookshop.co.uk forward slash events
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the London Review Bookshop. It's a pleasure this evening to welcome Gavin Francis and Philippe Sands. Philippe is a practising barrister, a professor of public understanding of law at UCL, and the author of perhaps the most popular books we've ever stocked on international human rights law, including East West Street, The Rat Line, and most recently 38 Laundress Street. Gavin's a practicing GP and writes regularly for a variety of outlets, including The Guardian and the London Review of Books, I'm pleased to say. His books include Free For All, Adventures in Human Being, and the book published today that we're here to celebrate this evening, The Unfragile Mind.
They'll be in conversation for about 45 minutes, following which there'll be time for questions from the floor with the roving mic. Welcome, welcome. Good evening. Thank you, Charlie.
Thank you so much to everyone who works at the London Review of Books bookshop for this invitation. I'm really thrilled to be here with Gavin. We don't know each other so well or for so long. This is a sort of return match. We had the home or away leg, depending on your perspective, in Edinburgh last year, and I loved it so much. that I said when your book comes out, please, please, please, can we talk about your book or books? I just want to begin before we start digging into the book. One of the things that I was astonished by when I did meet you last year was your work. So can you begin perhaps to tell us just to contextualize the writing of this book? Who is Gavin Francis? Who is Gavin Francis?
Right, okay. Well, there's a variety of ways I could approach that question. If I approach it in the sense of what my work is, then I am a GP of 20 years standing. I worked for 13 years as a partner in the city center of Edinburgh near the university. And I now work in a very odd hybrid job where one week in every four I'm a single-handed GP on the island of Mull and Iona and with a lot of on-call and a lot of clinical responsibility and duty. And then three weeks out of four, I'm in Edinburgh and I'm the director of admissions for the medical school there and a tutor at the medical school. So I've got a very kind of hybrid job. And I would say probably about a third of my headspace is taken up with clinical medicine.
About a third of it is taken up with my university work and about a third of it is with my books. that I'm writing and that's a kind of rolling variety that gives me a great sort of feeling of reward and I feel like there's lots of synergies there. Essentially there's synergies that keep me going.
Yeah, and that was one of the things that bonded us because in my life as a lawyer and a university teacher and a writer, there was a sort of parallel existence. But one of the things that you did that you've already mentioned, I quizzed you extensively about it because I was so fascinated about it. And I think it relates actually also to aspects of this book. As I read it, I thought back to the conversation about the time you spend in Mole, a tiny community, a very mixed community in which you meet the whole spectrum in a sense of humanity on a single tiny island. Can you share a little bit about how what that experience is, what it means to you, and also how it informed your writing of this book.
Okay, interesting. I knew Philippe was the best person to chair this kind of book. I would get some very interesting knight's move questions that would keep me on the hop. For 13 years, as I said, I was a GP in a small city centre practice where I worked three days a week and there was a lot of continuity of care. And a lot of this book is drawn from my experience being a city centre GP. And I worked, it was quite a mixed environment there. And I did local work for the homeless practice in Edinburgh and the Cowgate and a little bit of teaching work Then two or three years ago, I could see my 50th birthday approaching fast and I thought I wanted to avert a midlife crisis.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–10:50
2
Who is Gavin Francis and what inspired him to write The Unfragile Mind?
10:50–24:41
3
How does working as a GP on Mull and in Edinburgh shape Gavin’s view of mental health?
24:41–1:05:00
4
Why does Gavin challenge psychiatric diagnostic labels like DSM and ICD?
1:05:00–1:13:46
5
How can diagnostic labels become self‑fulfilling and limit treatment options?
1:13:46–1:13:59