Life, Death and Biscuits: The inspiring diaries of a Critical Care nurse on the Covid front line
£7.90£8.50 (-7%)
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘A heart-breaking story of courage and compassion from the front line of the toughest battle our nurses have had to fight. Anthea Allen’s writing is raw, honest and full of love for those she cares for.’ Susanna Reid
An extraordinarily powerful memoir based on the diaries of intensive care nurse Anthea Allen, who worked on the front line of one of the largest hospitals in Europe during the Covid crisis.
A nurse for 25 years, Anthea thought she had seen it all. But with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust into hourly challenges – many a matter of life and death – while on the Critical Care units of St George’s in south London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits. But her appeal to help boost the morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories detailing the realities of being a front line worker.
It wasn’t long before Anthea’s accounts were circulating far and wide, capturing the attention of the nation and being feted by the likes of Richard Branson and Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid.
In Life, Death and Biscuits, Anthea reveals the human story behind Covid, sharing tales of hope, fear and laughter from both her ‘family’ of nurses and the patients she encountered. Forged in a crisis, this deeply affecting memoir offers a unique and inspiring perspective on the pandemic that simultaneously tore the world apart and brought us together. Both heart-wrenching and uplifting, it serves as a testimony to love, resilience and the human spirit.
Anthea Allen’s book ‘Life, Death and Biscuits’ was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 21-02-2022.
Read more
Additional information
| Publisher | HarperElement (16 Mar. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 320 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008506485 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008506483 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 2 x 19.8 cm |
by Mrs M.C Woods
A heart stopping, inspiring, emotional look into a world few of us experience.
Whilst we clapped, the staff in the NHS were tackling the unimaginable.
Reading this book allows you to feel just a tiny amount of the emotion, exhaustion, laughter and love that went on behind the doors of our hospitals.
Thank you for sharing but most of all thank you for caring.
by beverley campbell
this is an account of a nurse’s experience through covid .It was an honest view of the stress and emotional pressures nhs workers and others had to endure .
Well written and hard to put down .
by stefania
Buy it!
by Seeker
I found this rather an odd book…I work in an NHS teaching hospital, and got seconded to our C19-ICU during the covid waves of 2020 and 2021 (I am not a nurse, critical care or otherwise, talk about being thrown in at the deep end). Somehow this book, interesting though it is, somehow (for me) doesn’t quite catch the experience of those who worked in critical care/ICU during that time.
For example, the fear felt by most of us (not so much for ourselves, but for our loved ones, colleagues and patients); the way many of my colleagues left the family home and stayed in hospital accommodation (which they had to pay for…) in order to protect a vulnerable family member. One of my colleagues stayed at home but lived completely separated from her family during the heights of covid: she would stand in one corner of a room, and hug a pillow while her little child also hugged a pillow as the only way they could share any contact. This book gets the dedication of staff across, but fails to express the depth of the struggle and the loneliness – normally our Theatre teams are close, and hug a lot, but all that had to stop and it was hard sometimes to cry as we knew others had it far worse.
Also the desperation (especially at the beginning of the pandemic) when no-one knew how best to treat the terribly sick patients, and the way the rules, advice and best practice changed daily to take advantage of each day’s progress in how to deal with the virus. I saw doctors and anaesthetists crying in despair as they frantically tried to save patients, and finally having to sometimes accept defeat. I was surprised how the author mentions that her patients weren’t getting their hair washed – we washed all our patients, even the sickest, every day. We also had notecards attached to every patient’s notes describing the person, their interests, their families, and photographs of them in happier times, so that we could all know them.
I felt too that some phrases were overused; could have done with a bit more editing. Maybe it’s because I Was There and I think of my own experiences and jottings that this book is not hitting the spot for me – perhaps for non-frontline workers it does convey what it was like. In any event, it does describe to some degree How It Was, and that’s not a bad thing as everyone now tries to forget all about it and pretend it isn’t happening anymore.
by Kindle Customer
A wonderful insight on how the nurses undertook working during the Covid 19 pandemic. Thank you Anthea Allen for writing your emails, keeping your diary and putting them together in this book.
Mostly thank you and all nurses for doing the work you do and taking on the extra marathon the pandemic took you on.
by Hande Z
Allen had been a critical care nurse for 20 years and thought she had seen everything – including a case in which a driver who was not wearing a seat-belt was propelled through the windscreen and got himself impaled. But she was wrong Covid-19 was not just a case; not just an event. In this book which documents her life as a critical care nurse at St George’s University Hospital in the period March 2020 to July 2021.
Doctors and even ventilators tend to get the news reports. Somehow, nurses have been overlooked. Yet they are the ones who set up and operate the ventilators. They see the faces of those whose lives depend on them, and the faces of their family members – many were not allowed to see their loved ones as they lay dying. One woman could only see her husband through the ward window as the nurses held up his hand so that he could wave to them.
Not all the cases were Covid cases. One was about an 80-year-old woman who had her ankle tapped by a supermarket trolley. The woman who ran into her did not even know what had happened. But the old lady’s ankle soon developed a blood clot, and the wound became septic. Things spiralled downwards after that, resulting in her foot being amputated.
We are left to marvel, admire, and feel for nurses at the frontline, especially in times of pandemics and war. What drives people to a profession like this? People like Anthea Allen, people with a sense of mission, loads of empathy, a strong constitution, and a few packets of biscuits on standby.
by Olwynne
Firstly you need to know that I am a very emotional person. The sort who cries at Bambi and Lady and the Tramp. Having said that this true life account is having a profound effect on me. You read in the newspapers and heard on the TV the accounts of what it was like on the COVID wards but this really touched home. I am only 16% through the book and the tears are flowing. I’m hoping I can get through to the end but I have serious doubts. How whimpish am I. These amazing people lived this life for months and I am doubting my ability to read to the end. I will update later on this. This is without doubt a hard book to read because of the reality of the every day situation our amazing nurses and all other COVID involved staff had to live through. I hope we never have to battle another pandemic of any sort. I stood and clapped. I put my rainbow up. I thought I was truly appreciating what these people went through. How wrong I was. To say they were heroes doesn’t do them justice. I can’t find words that does. Read this book to truly understand their passion, commitment, dedication and selflessness. Bless you all and thankyou to Anthea, the author, for helping me understand.