Thursday, 2nd April 2020, via Zoom (and thanks to Camilla Born for access to the pro version)
Present – everyone!: Richard (his book choice), Andrew, ChrisB, ChrisW, John, MarkT, MarkW, Steve, Willm.
This is a book written (as we discover towards the end) as therapy by a pathologist suffering from PTSD. It is partly a quite straight autobiography, written largely according to the flow of time (although starting with 3 chapters situated largely in the present or in his early career; but then back to his childhood), from his early childhood, the death of his mother, his upbringing by a very loving but sometimes very angry father, his falling in love with the idea of forensic pathology; through is training, his various jobs and gradual career progression, and the incredible roll-call of major cases with which he was involved over that career; culminating in the major changes to his profession, and to his ‘standing’ in the medical and legal world, and his investigation and possible ‘striking-off’.
But it is also variously:
- a discussion of the role of a pathologist, some of the techniques involved, and the changing nature if the profession;
- a detective book – lots of him looking for clues and putting them together to try to find ‘the truth’ – although there are a number of discussions about the malleability of ‘truth’ especially within the Court systems;
- and a book that moves between the professional (and the intense interest in some of the cases), and the personal, both externally with his marriage and his children; and internally, with him distancing himself both from the emotional side of what his job entailed, and the emotional side of his marriage.
Overall, there was quite a wide range of opinion on this book, and a resulting quite wide range of scores, scores (a low of 4 and a high of 8.5). Some found the author ‘pompous and smug’; others felt they could empathise with him and understand his dilemmas. Nevertheless, almost everyone had a great deal to say about the book, and it generated quite a lot of discussion.
One thing that everyone was agreed upon – it was quite astonishing that this one man had been involved with so many important and memorable cases, from major disasters, to incredibly high-profile work (eg the re-evaluation of how Princess Di died, or the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry), to extremely well known child protection cases, through to prison and police racism and prison brutality.
Most of us had not realised or remembered the close proximity of the series of disasters that befell mainly the UK between 1987 and 1989:
“In March 1987 the car and passenger ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge because the bow door had been left open: 193 passengers and crew died. In August 1987 Michael Ryan went on a killing spree and shot thirty-one people in Hungerford before killing himself. In November 1987 a lighted match dropped down through an escalator on the Piccadilly line at King’s Cross, causing a fire that claimed the lives of thirty - one people and injured a hundred more. In July 1988 the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea blew up, killing 167 men. On 12 December 1988 three trains collided due to signal failure just outside Clapham Junction. Thirty-five passengers died and more than four hundred were injured, sixty-nine of them very severely. Later that month a bomb planted on a Pan Am jumbo jet exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 people on board and eleven on the ground. Less than three weeks later, on 8 January 1989, an engine fault developed in a British Midland Boeing 737 which, compounded with pilot error, brought down the plane on the embankment of the M1, just short of the runway at East Midlands Airport . Of 126 people on board, forty-seven died and seventy-four suffered serious injury. In April 1989 ninety-six Liverpool football fans were crushed to death and more than seven hundred were injured at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield . … In August 1989 a collision between a pleasure boat and a dredger in the Thames claimed the lives of fifty-one people, most of them under the age of thirty.”
Some of us found this book quite gripping from the beginning, with the description of Hungerford, and throughout his account of the different disasters with which he had been involved. As ChrisW said – “I found it fascinating, readable honestly written especially over his personal life, and the intertwining of the personal and the professional”.
Willm made the point that the book was made much more immediate because we had already heard about almost all of the cases he described – that this provided a sense of familiarity, of identification, with him and the work that simply recounting a large number of post-mortems would not have. ChrisB found it “really interesting; quite fascinating – the historical context and how these events happened in quick succession.”
John found it a ‘slow burn, but that he warmed to the author and his story as the book progressed’ (specifically from about Chapter 25 onwards!) – he began to like him once he began less career-driven. John made the point that the book functioned on and described three levels – personal change, professional change and organizational change – ChrisB also liked this mix of personal, professional and organizational; and all of us in the group can reflect on how these three dimensions have affected us at this latter stages of our own lives.
So for this author,
- at the personal level, he moved from a driven career-obsessive with a dead marriage, with PTSD, yet at the height of his profession to semi-retirement on the Isle of Man;
- at the professional level he saw his work change out of all recognition with the advent of DNA testing, moving from brief 3-page Reports to extensive 10-page+ ones, from thundering bombastic QCs, through major changes in thinking such as the advent of SIDS through to the change to a much more child protection view;
- and at the organizational level, the depersonalization of the ‘industry’, the move from characterful experts to evidence-based ones, the unforeseen consequences of policy changes such as the RAE leading to the un-academic-isation and privatisation of forensic series.
Yet this interest was not universal – others found that, from the outset, they did not like the author, or his writing style, and that majorly detracted from any enjoyment in the book – as MarkW said – “had I warmed to him, I’d have continued reading, but he was so pompous and smug that I simply didn’t feel like continuing”, and Andrew thought “generally I found it clunky, pompous, and self-absorbed –it is clear that on a lot of ethical and personal and moral issues his heart is clearly in the right place, but his stilted delivery sounded to me egocentric, and at times egotistical. It was a defence of his career”; and MarkT said “I didn’t like him – too selfish: he was so full of himself. Too long, quite tedious. I didn’t like him and I didn’t like the book – hated it in fact!”
Similarly, while some found the detailed analyses of the causes of death really interesting, others did not, and found that there were so many that they simply blurred into one long catalogue of post-mortems – as MarkT said “he went on and on about cases” and Steve: “Some of it was fascinating, quite a lot of it was tedious detail that was more to do with defending his actions that keeping the reader interested”. And ChrisW, although liking lots about it, felt that it was “one third too long, bogged down in detail, not as good as it progressed”, and a book that he would only recommend to a select few – not including Sue, his wife.
Most found his description interesting of the ‘alpha male’ environment that he spent a major part of his career in, with the consequent refusal to allow anyone to recognise any weaknesses, but again, some found his lack of challenge of this environment another aspect that they did not like.
Again, there was agreement that both the fact that his career could have ended in disgrace, and his apparent honesty about parts of his marriage and family life, as well as his mental health problems in later life, were interesting aspects; but again, whereas some found this a major positive in the book, others found that, as an autobiography, there seemed far too much ‘special pleading’ (“it read like a defence of his career as much as an expose of how the trauma affected him and his family”) and presenting many situations solely from his own viewpoint (of course all autobiography is partial, and so we always get only one side of the personal and professional stories). As Steve said: “it suffered from the affliction of every autobiography, which is a tendency to think we’re all fascinated!”
Steve spoke for many when he said “I’m fascinated in the generalities - the dealing with the horrors, the difficulty of maintaining a normal family life, and the reflections upon the kind of individual you need to be to do a job like this. The revelation and description of PTSD was powerful. But I wasn’t interested in the detail of his little battles with barristers, colleagues, clearing his name etc etc. I felt he confused what was interesting to the wider public, with what might be interesting only to a more professional audience. Could have been cut by a third.”
On the other hand, others did not find this the case, and found these details, and the discussions of his battles with barristers, colleagues, etc, really interesting.
And it was not that the more ‘medical / health professional’ of us were more interested in this detail – some of the ‘health professional’ members did enjoy this detail (Richard, ChrisB), whereas others did not (Andrew, MarkT).
For a number of members, there were strong resonances between aspects of the book and our own histories. So Andrew had direct links with the Marchioness disaster (both being woken by the noise from a police helicopter the morning after the disaster, and knowing someone white well whose sister died in it); having a brother-in-law as a QC in the Joy Gardner case; and having his wife and children picnicking on Wimbledon Common just after the Rachel Nicholls murder; as well as taking him back to his own medical training and early dissections whilst at the start of that training. And Richard found both many elements of the author’s upbringing, and much of his descriptions of being an Expert Witness, resonated hugely.
One final reflection that a few people made was that a key difference between fiction and some of these non-fictional / autobiographical accounts that we have read is that good writers of fiction use their skills to set the scene in a dramatic fashion, to ramp up the tension, or explore peoples’ relationships, such that they can be much more emotionally involving than much ‘factual’ writing.
Our discussion focused on:
• ‘professional detachment’ and the extent to which that was a needed ’defence mechanism’;
• whether we thought that forensic pathology should have been privatised because the pathologists were too busy to do any research;
• the whole issue of striking off Expert Witnesses for one mistake (Prof Sir Roy Meadows) or for revealing Munchausen’s (Prof David Southall) or potentially the author, because a later pathologist disagreed with him;
• and the difficulties of trying to bring up children when both parents were busy running developing careers;
Richard Velleman
5th April 2020
