A Prescribed Life

by Tony Atkinson, Lynn Smailes

Tony Atkinson spent his early days suspended in a cage outside the sixth-storey window of his family home in 1920s London. So perhaps he was always destined to see the world differently, and to land in ridiculous, hilarious situations. There was the time he came between Winston Churchill and his bowel movements (an accident that required a parliamentary explanation) or the high-society shenanigans he witnessed after accidentally becoming footman to Queen Elizabeth – all just tasters from this wickedly funny, deeply touching and irresistibly charming memoir.

Tony and the love of his life came across the pond as ‘ten-pound Poms’. While he forged a successful career as an anaesthetist, his greatest gift may be for telling rousing tales. A Prescribed Life is a warm and engaging chronicle about love, medicine and royalty spanning almost a century of great change.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Tony Atkinson was born in London in 1929. He worked as a casual footman for the Royal family and as a waiter in London while he was training to be a doctor at Guy’s Hospital. Tony and his wife, Terry, brought their young family to Australia in 1962, and they settled in the northern suburbs of Melbourne where he practised as a specialist anaesthetist until 2014. He is a former President of the Medico-Legal Society.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Bronwyn Mcloughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think anyone could live a life like Tony's now: the whole story is just amazing. I did feel for his wife, because despite his obvious devotion to her and his daughters, she lived in an era where the wife gave up everything for the husband's success, and sometimes that made for extreme hardship. Not that he had it easy as a young trainee doctor, striving to accredit himself to become employable, in post war England. Tony's story rattles along with humour and a deft eye for the ridiculous. It is an easy read, and an insightful view of society at a certain time and place. The description of his elder years is poignant - becoming patient, instead of doctor, of deferring to medical people where once he would have called the shots. It is the story of a full life, much enjoyed and relished, despite the difficulties and unpleasantness.

[Ingrid Self · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vaguely interesting in parts. Did get boring. Abandoned.

[Kerry Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Self-published memoir of a GP trained in UK and coming to Australia as 10-pound Pom. Enjoyable and fascinating insight to the development of medical practice. Writing as expected with self-published book

[Lisa]

I posted the opening lines to this book and read up to the end of chapter two but then I got interested in other things and didn't get back to it.
See https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/10/07/o...