Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, award-winning comedian and activist Mark Thomas takes a look at our NHS, what state it's in, where it's going, and what we need to do to keep it. To create this show Mark Thomas conducted a series of public interviews with academics and practitioners, he spent a month in residency at the Imperial Healthcare Trust, and he spoke to a retired doctor about what could go wrong with his own health over the coming years. The result is this funny, raw and angry show about a service created, in its founder's words "in place of fear", which is now threatened by lack of funding. Through the interviews and hospital scenes recreated in the show, we see a service held together by dedicated staff, crippled by government policy which has created an internal market and indebted by PFI contracts from which private companies have made millions. This informative show toured venues throughout the UK in 2018, and is a strong wake-up call for those who want to see the NHS survive.

True, the city's many summer festivals each maintain their own identities. And yet 'The Festival' has stuck as a shorthand which captures the truly eclectic experience of 'doing Edinburgh' which has made the city's very name synonymous with world-leading culture and performance. This book is the first to tell the complete history of the Edinburgh Festival. Arts writer David Pollock paints an extraordinary portrait of the growth, glory years and struggles of this global cultural phenomenon. He introduces a wide cast of key individuals and shows, including Fleabag, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Joseph Beuys, The Fall and Six The Musical. The Edinburgh Festival: A Biography provides a unique perspective on the social and cultural history of Scotland and its capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It will delight and intrigue all who have experience of the greatest festival in the world.

Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a verbatim reconstruction of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry. Using only the words spoken at the Inquiry, the play deals predominantly with Part 2 which ran between January 2020 - July 2021 in which evidence was heard from those responsible for the disastrous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower before the tragic fire. Edited by Richard Norton-Taylor and directed by Nicholas Kent, the team behind previous testimonial plays The Colour of Justice: The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry, this edited verbatim account of the Grenfell Inquiry is aimed at giving the public an overview and access to some of the most important evidence. The play shows how companies involved in the refurbishment of the Tower conspired to cover up what they knew about the dangerous and life-threatening materials used to refurbish the Tower. It also reveals the incompetence and neglect of local authorities. Staged in Notting Hill Tabernacle in October 2021, this features the full text of the play alongside additional information on the context of Grenfell and the ongoing inquiry.

Grenfell: System Failure asks further vital questions raised by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry since the critically acclaimed 2021 play Grenfell: Value Engineering. Based entirely on the words of those involved in the final phase of the Inquiry (which ended in November 2022), this new play interrogates why the testing regime failed to warn of the danger of installing inflammable materials, why manufacturers promoted such products with no regard to safety, why government regulations ignored the dangers and were not updated, and why politicians failed to ensure proper oversight. Through the testimonies of bereaved residents, it explores how they were failed by the London Fire Brigade on the night and abandoned by the Local Authority in the chaos of the fire's aftermath. This play is brought to the stage by the creative team responsible for Grenfell: Value Engineering at the Tabernacle, Birmingham Rep and on Channel 4, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – The Colour of Justice at the Tricycle Theatre, the National Theatre, in the West End and on BBC TV, and the Olivier Award-winning Saville Inquiry play, Bloody Sunday.

1948 marked a turning point in British history, for it was the year that the National Health Service began. Inaugurated by the health minister, Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan, the new nationwide system was established to provide countrywide free healthcare for every citizen at the point of use, and, as Bevan believed, would 'lift the shadow from millions of homes.' No longer would people have to fear paying for their medical care and potentially being pushed into poverty. Every aspect of medical care began to change, gradually affecting the way that the profession, including doctors, nurses, district nurses, dentists, opticians, pharmacists and hospitals practised and operated. It also created new opportunities, enabling the scope of treatments available to grow. This beautifully illustrated book traces the origins of the NHS, from Florence Nightingale, to the NHS beginnings in 1948 and the subsequent decades and introduces readers to the people who worked for the NHS and to the men, women and children who benefited from the new universal system. Viewed through the prism of social history, and using personal recollections, this story takes account of the debates surrounding the evolving system, and looks at the way that innovation and science have transformed healthcare since the NHS began.

The Committee's report examines the use of healthcare charges within the NHS for certain treatments (such as prescriptions, dentistry and optical services) and non-clinical services (such as car parking fees and charges for television and telephone use), including the level of charges, categories of exemption, and whether the charging system is sufficiently transparent to users. It also considers whether such charges have a place within an NHS which claims to be free at the point of use, or whether these charges should be abolished and the necessary resources raised through alternative charging systems. International research indicates that health charges have a negative effect on health, particularly on patients with long-term illnesses. The report finds that the system of health charges in England is a mess and lacks any comprehensible underlying principles, developed largely through ad hoc responses to the need to raise money. The system of exemptions to charging is also full of anomalies, particularly in relation to prescription charges, and has not been updated since 1968 despite improvements in medical science. The Committee makes 22 conclusions and recommendations to improve the system, including the need for more research in England on public attitudes to health, on the effects of charges on patient health and the use of health services, and on the costs and benefits of alternative charging systems. The report recommends that a number of short-term changes be made immediately, including alterations to the prescription pre-payment certificate (PPC) to improve take-up levels, a review of new dental charges, free parking for patients who have to attend out-patient clinics on a daily basis and reduced rates for those who must attend hospital regularly.