Author Description

The Young Physician focuses on the public school and medical student days of the central character Edwin Ingleby in the years before the Great War. Born in Halesby [Halesowen], the son of a chemist and with an ailing mother ambitious for her son, Edwin experiences the ups and downs of school life and subsequently the rigours of the five-year training at the medical school of North Bromwich [Birmingham]. Brett Young explores in a gentle tolerant way what forms Edwin's character - his mother's Welsh background, his father's Somerset relations - and provides insights into the range of people he encounters in Halesby and North Bromwich, from the rich to the poor, the self-centred to the humble and appreciative. Edwin's education is set against the background of North Bromwich's development as a city and the recognition of the new University's medical school.