I have always had a fascination for the UK. My fascination for health care is more recent, but even then it is obvious and very interesting to see how different health care systems can be. I knew no better than the UK having free (well, tax payed) health care for everyone since somewhere after the Victorian era. This book gave a very interesting peek in how that system came to be, and how it evolved to what it is today.

The text is alternated with a lot of pictures, which makes you can get through this book in a short time. I like the way the pictures made the text easier to comprehend - I think (almost) every non-fiction book could use pictures to enhance the reading experience. That was very well done here. It did make me realise though, that it is also a short book. I would have loved more in-dept information, perhaps some expansion of what was told about the actual people experiencing it all, instead of what now sometimes felt like a brief overview.

All in all this is a very interesting book if you want to know more about the NHS, and do not have a lot of knowledge of how things evolved and were before how it is today.

This is a very interesting read for anyone who is interested in health care in the UK. The NHS is a vital service – their work is invaluable to millions. The writing isn’t limited to the years in the title, it also includes some very interesting background information around the years prior to its inception in 1948 with fascinating statistics and explanations as to why such a service was vital to the health and wellbeing of the UK population. It’s extremely well researched with a wealth of information contained within its sixty four pages.

There are also numerous images depicting many different aspects of the service over the years. It was interesting to see a photograph of a health centre in my area which was one of the first of its kind to be opened in 1953 (one of the many statistics I learnt in the book) and the fact that it looks almost exactly the same nearly 70 years on.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in health care or indeed anyone who has ever been treated by the NHS, which probably covers the entire population of the UK (and a few others world wide!)