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Hello, my mother had an unusual way of bringing me into the conversation whenever guests managed to force themselves into my inhospitable childhood home, in the middle of a discussion about, say, the relative merits of Satathwaite iced buns,

she'd suddenly wave a hand in my direction and say, of course, Lawrence had a near-death experience.

She then explained that when I was only eight years old, I'd had a bad stomach pain that was

diagnosed by our avuncular pipe smoking doctor as indigestion, but turned out to be a

burst appendix, what they call peritonitis, and so I've been rushed to hospital and

the consultant there, so it was a bit late in the day but they do their best.

And then Mother went on to explain that after the operation I was so near to meeting my maker

they'd had to send for an emergency priest so I could make my last confession.

And only then, said Mother, leaning forwards on her seat, after Lawrence had made his

confession and received absolution for his sins he began miraculously to get better and

look at him now!

Now of course I was never in any position to contest the details of that story, especially the bit about the divine

intervention, but I always suspected that the hospital staff would have provided a

rather different version of the manner in which I was rescued or saved from

death.

And it was that likelihood, I think,

which made me so interested in a new paper

in the Sociology of Health and Illness Journal.

It was reporting on research

into the ways in which hospitals actually handle

...