Cancer
Low life
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a…
The heart bleeds
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
Family misfortunes
The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We…
Low life
At the desk I gave my name and showed my Covid vaccination pass and the woman told me to take…
From Sooki to Snoopy
It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…
Low life
The chesty Corsican taxi driver was giving me his earnest appraisal of the way things were headed in France politically.…
Low life
With a French health card everything is free for us cancer patients, even taxis to and from the hospital. ‘This…
Low life
Not long after Catriona and I first met, her husband painted my head and shoulders portrait in oils as I…
Low life
Although fatigued to the point of catatonia, and sitting there like a 19th-century Fang funeral mask, I am glad to…
Is the daily drip of Covid statistics still helpful?
It is hard to remember a time when the daily drip of Covid statistics was not part of our lives.…
Real life
After refusing to issue my HRT without a blood pressure test, the GP surgery rang to offer me an appointment.…
Low life
In the waiting room I thought about the Duke of Edinburgh. In particular, I pictured him saluting the cenotaph on…
Low life
After weeks of living in the 18th century, going everywhere on foot and encountering few other souls, I drove to…
Low life
The Moulinards had inhabited the old stone hilltop house for centuries, ekeing out a hard living among the sun-baked boulders.…
I’ve never seen a film like it: Ordinary Love reviewed
Ordinary Love stars Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson as a long-married couple whose lives are disrupted when she is diagnosed…
![Friedrich Nietzche [Photo: Roger-Viollet/Shutterstock]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/26Octlowlife.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The divine comedy of Friedrich Nietzsche
I’ve come back to the empty house for the second time in the six weeks since my mother died. The…
Compassion fatigue is as damaging to a doctor’s health as to a patient’s
Medical training is a process of toughening up: take iron that’s vulnerable to rust, add carbon and make steel. That’s…
The mysterious ways of the French
These new tablets that will save or at least prolong my life have unpredictable side effects which only now, a…
Do I have cancer in my left eye?
My luck had to run out one of these fine days. Everybody’s does sooner or later. I’ve had a fantastic…
My oncologist is a shining goddess
The weather forecast was rain, torrential, all day, so I took my anorak. In the hospital car park it was…
Proton therapy: Cancer revolution or costly white elephant?
It’s Asco week in Chicago: the biggest meeting of clinical oncologists in the world. McCormick Place convention centre, the largest…
Cancer? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world
Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my…
On giving and taking offence
‘Slight prick,’ she said. The nurses all say that before they slide the needle in the upstanding vein in the…
Has Provence cured my cancer?
During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets…
Despite her inability to talk or swallow, Genevieve Fox brims with joie de vivre
A good, solid life-threatening illness can be the making of a writer. This has certainly been the case for Genevieve…
