Part of the solution probably is in rejecting the idea that tech will revolutionise caring roles (does anyone really think that…? From 2012-14, she led a team as Editorial Director of Strategy, working on a project around reimagining the institution of a newspaper and its relationship with readers.

She is the author of many non-fiction books, including The Plot: A Biography of My Father’s English Acre, which won the Portico Prize, and Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize and the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year.View image in fullscreen Sculptor Luke Perry’s medical worker, installed at a park near Birmingham, a tribute to care workers during the coronavirus pandemic. The result, Bunting argues, is that the complexity of care work (it’s emotional, unpredictable and communicative aspects) are flattened into a deterministic, static set of tasks that are to be optimally delivered to meet the consumer’s (recipient’s) desires. Part policy exploration, part history, part memoir, and part anthropological study, this is a detailed and deeply worrying take on the state of modern British healthcare – the most loved and trusted part of the British State that has been under constant attack for decades. I was being cared for by innumerable people during those months; the kindness of strangers would often overwhelm me. Covering several different types and stages of care, Madeleine Bunting takes a deep dive into the important but unspoken world of care.

Bunting condemns the political dimensions of needlessly imposed austerity policies, with their disastrous outcomes for care. No one has found a way to measure continuity of care or its value, but we know it reduces hospital admissions. Over five years, the author travelled the country, speaking to charity workers, doctors, social workers, in-home carers, nurses, palliative care teams and parents, to explore the value of care, the hidden glue that binds us together.Within the current climate the book provides an answer to those questioning how we reached this point and what political and cultural shifts are required to repair our starved care systems. Care packages” are “delivered”; satisfaction questionnaires are ubiquitous – nurses are accused of not showing enough “empathy”. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

The Initiative supported the All Party Parliamentary Group in their 10 month inquiry which led to a report Mindful Nation UK, published in October 2015. She wrote about a wide range of subjects including Islam, faith, global development, politics and social change. Instead, a highly centralised national health service prevailed, which adopted a medicalised approach to care, valuing technical expertise over human values.

Separating out hands-on care from the caring infrastructures necessary to enable it, including more indirect but interlinked sustaining practices, Bunting does not expand on the forms of community building, or radical municipalism, which are essential for repairing care. She shows that care is ubiquitous and largely invisible, and she raises vital questions about the place and value of care in British society. The book draws on Bunting’s personal experience of care – mainly as a giver, it seems – but also rests on accounts of care given and received in a variety of settings by professionals and others.

No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers. I most valued the general information in Bunting’s introduction and in between her interviews, while I found that the bulk of the book alternated between dry statistics and page after page of interview transcripts.The recruitment and retention of nurses has been damaged by below inflation pay increases from 2010 to 2018, with a shortfall of 108,000 nurses predicted by 2029. In Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care, Madeleine Bunting is revealed as an astute observer of the often invisible world of care and its attendant imprecisions, deficits and exploitations. Though they are frequently worn out from the Sisyphean labour of “rolling back anguish”, the care workers she speaks to remain endlessly curious about their patients or clients, wanting to hear life stories.