Ask the Author: Eamonn Toland
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Eamonn Toland
By nearly dropping dead! At the age of 29 I had a pulmonary embolism after a long-haul flight and collapsed unconscious at Heathrow Airport in London. The UK National Health Service saved my life, but it was just before Christmas and they were overwhelmed by "granny dumping" - perfectly healthy seniors were dumped in hospital by their families, who didn't want to look after them over the holidays. I was in a disused operating theatre with lonely, dying men. One day they forgot to feed us for twelve hours. I saw the best and the worst in human nature up close and personal.
I had always been fascinated by the light and the dark side of human nature. I studied history at college, and I was appalled by how people turned their moral code upside down to justify slavery. The colony of Georgia, which includes modern day Alabama and Mississippi, had a ban on slavery that lasted for decades, until the profits from cotton plantations forced its repeal. I wanted to know why we are kind, how kind people do cruel things, and how we can recognise what we have in common in an increasingly polarised world. That gave me the idea for THE PURSUIT OF KINDNESS.
I had always been fascinated by the light and the dark side of human nature. I studied history at college, and I was appalled by how people turned their moral code upside down to justify slavery. The colony of Georgia, which includes modern day Alabama and Mississippi, had a ban on slavery that lasted for decades, until the profits from cotton plantations forced its repeal. I wanted to know why we are kind, how kind people do cruel things, and how we can recognise what we have in common in an increasingly polarised world. That gave me the idea for THE PURSUIT OF KINDNESS.
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