Rachel Clarke

N.B. This event is now taking place at the Ukrainian Community Centre, 14 Royal Terrace, EH7 5AB. All other details remain unchanged.

This September, we are delighted to be joined by NHS care doctor and three times bestselling author Rachel Clarke to celebrate her latest book, The Story of a Heart. Come along to hear more about this moving testament to compassion for the dying, the many ways we honour our loved ones, and the tenacity of love. On this special occasion, Rachel will be interviewed by Kate Womersley, an NHS Doctor in Psychiatry whose research aims to improve sex and gender equity in biomedical research.

The Story of a Heart

One summer day, nine-year-old Keira suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident. Though her brain and the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira's parents and siblings agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max had been hospitalised for nearly a year with a virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max's parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family.

This is the unforgettable story of how one family's grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. With tremendous compassion and clarity, Dr Rachel Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira's heart and explores the history of the remarkable medical innovations that made it possible, stretching back over a century and involving the knowledge and dedication not just of surgeons but of countless physicians, immunologists, nurses and scientists.

About Rachel Clarke

Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and the author of three Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction books. The most recent of these, Breathtaking (2021), was adapted into an acclaimed television series, broadcast on ITV in 2024. Dear Life (2020), depicting her work in an NHS hospice, was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize. Your Life in My Hands (2017) documents life as a junior doctor. Before going to medical school, Rachel was a broadcast journalist.