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This is the vitamin-boosted issue of The Reader in which doctors and nurses write about the matters that are close to their heart: 

• Christopher Dowrick examines the good of stories in a health-setting and the crucial need for a patient to be able to ‘tell a good story’ about her- or himself.
• Community nurse and dovegreyreader Lynne Hatwell gives a personal account of the way in which reading and nursing have twined themselves together in her life.
• Raymond Tallis goes into very deep questions with Chekhov
• Sheffield GP and writer, Jo Cannon’s short story, ‘Nasma’s Malady’ concerns one of the regular visitors at a doctor’s surgery, a woman who is suffering from the past.
• Plus new poetry and fiction from John Kinsella, an interview with Richard Briers, and Janet Suzman’s vivid account of her childhood and experience in apartheid South Africa.