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Graham Trevose #1
The Facemaker
Graham Trevose is an ardent pioneer of reconstructive surgery having seen its huge benefit under the hands of a talented American surgeon. However London is not America and this new form of treatment is received with deep suspicion by orthodox medicine. It is seen as defying God’s will and interfering with matters entirely out of bounds. Yet Trevose is completely committed to this work and uses it to help those in desperate need – whilst also benefiting from performing plastic surgery on the rich and famous. The ethical debates which perplexed medical men in post-First-World-War London are surely the very ones that today’s doctors are grappling with as they face the issues of human cloning, animal organ transplants and embryo-screening. Richard Gordon’s The Facemaker is as relevant today as it ever was.
The Author: Richard Gordon, real name Dr. Gordon Stanley Ostlere, was born in England on 15 September 1921. He is best-known for his hilarious ‘Doctor’ books. Himself a qualified doctor, he worked as an anaesthetist at the famous St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was also a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon, before leaving medical practice in 1952 to take up writing full time. Many of his books are based on his own true experiences in the medical profession and are all told with the wry wit and candid humour that have become his hallmark.
In all, there are eighteen titles in the Doctor Series, with further comic writings in another seven volumes, including ‘Great Medical Disasters’ and ‘Great Medical Mysteries’, plus more serious works concerning the lives of medical practitioners.
He has also published several technical books under his own name, mainly concerned with anaesthetics for both students and patients. Additionally, he has written on gardening, fishing and cricket and was also a regular contributor to Punch magazine. His ‘Private Lives’ series, taking in Dr. Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Florence Nightingale, has been widely acclaimed.
The enormous success of ‘Doctor in the House’, first published in the 1950’s, startled its author. It was written whilst he was a surgeon aboard a cargo ship, prior to a spell as an academic anaesthetist at Oxford. His only previous literary experience had been confined to work as an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. There was, perhaps, a foretaste of things to come whilst working on the Journal as the then editor, finding Gordon somewhat jokey, put him in charge of the obituaries!
The film of ‘Doctor in the House’ uniquely recovered its production costs whilst still showing at the cinema in London’s West End where it had been premiered. This endeared him to the powerful Rank Organisation who made eight films altogether of his works, which were followed by a then record-breaking TV series, and further stage productions.
Richard Gordon’s books have been translated into twenty languages.
He married a doctor and they had four children, two of whom became house surgeons. He now lives in London.
The Author: Richard Gordon, real name Dr. Gordon Stanley Ostlere, was born in England on 15 September 1921. He is best-known for his hilarious ‘Doctor’ books. Himself a qualified doctor, he worked as an anaesthetist at the famous St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was also a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon, before leaving medical practice in 1952 to take up writing full time. Many of his books are based on his own true experiences in the medical profession and are all told with the wry wit and candid humour that have become his hallmark.
In all, there are eighteen titles in the Doctor Series, with further comic writings in another seven volumes, including ‘Great Medical Disasters’ and ‘Great Medical Mysteries’, plus more serious works concerning the lives of medical practitioners.
He has also published several technical books under his own name, mainly concerned with anaesthetics for both students and patients. Additionally, he has written on gardening, fishing and cricket and was also a regular contributor to Punch magazine. His ‘Private Lives’ series, taking in Dr. Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Florence Nightingale, has been widely acclaimed.
The enormous success of ‘Doctor in the House’, first published in the 1950’s, startled its author. It was written whilst he was a surgeon aboard a cargo ship, prior to a spell as an academic anaesthetist at Oxford. His only previous literary experience had been confined to work as an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. There was, perhaps, a foretaste of things to come whilst working on the Journal as the then editor, finding Gordon somewhat jokey, put him in charge of the obituaries!
The film of ‘Doctor in the House’ uniquely recovered its production costs whilst still showing at the cinema in London’s West End where it had been premiered. This endeared him to the powerful Rank Organisation who made eight films altogether of his works, which were followed by a then record-breaking TV series, and further stage productions.
Richard Gordon’s books have been translated into twenty languages.
He married a doctor and they had four children, two of whom became house surgeons. He now lives in London.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
41 people want to read
About the author
Richard Gordon
279 books43 followersRichard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 24, 2019
In a secondhand bookshop, I found a collection of Richard Gordon's books all in one volume. I bought it in order to re-read the hugely enjoyable Doctor series, but there are also two extra books in the collection: "The Facemaker" and "The Medical Witness". I found "The Facemaker" very slow and completely different from the Doctor books, but as I got into it, I found myself looking forward to reading the 2nd and 3rd books (but no titles!) which are supposed to follow it. Has anyone here read them?
April 25, 2022
still one of my all time favorites
November 9, 2025
As a teenager I wasn't really fussed on this book, in which Graham Trevose supports reconstructive surgery, which is a new concept.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews