Direct Red

A Surgeon's View of Her Life-or-Death Profession

Author  Gabriel Weston
Direct Red

In this powerful and sometimes shocking account, a surgeon reveals her experience of hospital life with rare frankness.

In her mid-twenties, Gabriel Weston - an arts graduate with no scientific qualification beyond high school-level biology - decided to become a surgeon. She enrolled at night school, then went through many years of medical school and surgical training.

Now in her late thirties, she has achieved her ambition and is working as a surgeon in a British hospital. "But I have never quite managed to shake off the feeling that I am an imposter,"she says. "Even when operating, it sometimes seems like I am on the outside looking in."

Direct Red is the result of those observations. It is a superbly written,…