Dr. Peter Emerson

My latest book A DOCTOR'S LUCKY LIFE tells the story of the crucial events and people, and the interesting patients that I encountered in my family and professional career – all against the background of how society and its diseases and disorders have evolved.

My education began in a London council school where we all learned to do our sums, and to read and write god English in spite of our cockney speaking accents. It was in the aftermath of the First World War when there were no rewards for being idle or infirm and, quite young, I decided that to be a doctor would ensure a purpose and a value in whatever the future held for me.

My education moved from the council to a grammar, then to a boy-only boarding school before wartime Cambridge. There I not learnt the basics for my medical studies, but also met, Ceris, my future one and only wife.

After Cambridge, Ceris was conscripted to Bletchley Park to help break the German’s Enigma codes, and I went to St George’s Hospital in London to learn about diagnosing and treating real patients.

I qualified and spent six months as a junior doctor before being conscripted into the RAF Medical Service. After I returned to civilian life and more experience in hospitals in London and a final year in New York, I was appointed as Consultant Physician in London’s Westminster Hospital and later also r Dean of the Medical School.

My other appointments have included civilian consultant physician to the Royal Navy, and increasing seniority as a Fellow, Assistant Registrar, Examiner, Censor, Senior Censor and Vice President at the Royal College of Physicians in London’s Regents Park,

Life was never dull; in addition to my work in London, my clinical and research interests often took me, whenever possible with Ceris, to Europe and the Middle East, Iran and the USA where I was an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

I now live independently in central London, my dear and darling Ceris having died three years ago.