Two days after publication THE STORY OF A HEART was nominated for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, Rachel's second time on the longlist (the first, in 2020, was for DEAR LIFE). Other longlisted authors include Salman Rushdie, Richard Flanagan and Sue Prideaux.

Read more here.

On 25th Aug The Sunday Times Magazine ran an extract from THE STORY OF A HEART which became the magazine's cover story, featuring photos of Max and Keira.

Read the story here.

The 60’ trailer for BREATHTAKING can be viewed here.

G2 cover interview with Rachel ahead of the ITV broadcast of BREATHTAKING by the Guardian’s Zoe Williams. Rachel commented: “Even though your heart was breaking, you were losing your mum, your dad, your spouse, you stuck to the rules simply to try and protect other people. The contrast, between that and partygate, was the absolute best and worst of Britain, side by side. It made my blood boil then, and it always will.”

Full interview here.

Rachel, Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah were all interviewed by the Times for this feature ahead of broadcast. Rachel commented: “In my head I had this one simple, almost desperate desire, and that was simply to show the public what it was like for staff and patients inside an NHS hospital. I wanted to take the viewer by the hand into the Covid ward, so that they felt and heard and kind of smelt and experienced what it was truly like … Because now there’s a big chunk of the population and politicians as well who want us to believe as a society that lockdowns weren’t necessary, that Covid was just a mild cold, that we didn’t need to be vaccinated, it was all a ‘scamdemic’. And of course all of that is absolutely, categorically wrong. And if we don’t learn from that, we will just career into the next pandemic making the same mistakes.”

Full feature here.

We may think we know what a doctor does, but do we really understand what the job entails? Dr Phil Hammond’s new BBC Radio 4 series Doctor, Doctor explores what drives those who spend their lives saving ours. Rachel’s episode was broadcast on 12 Dec and can be heard on BBC Sounds here.

Rachel’s latest Guardian column responds to former prime minister Boris Johnson’s testimony at the UK’s national Covid Inquiry, arguing for the importance of truthfulness and candour from politicians in times of crisis: “For me the most salient lesson from Johnson’s testimony is not an insight into pandemic management but one into the exquisite pain that the misuse of words can inflict on the public.”

Read the piece here.

Rachel’s next book, The Story of a Heart, tells the extraordinarily moving story of  how two families, united by one transplanted heart,  changed medical history in the UK.

In 2017, the lives of two children, Max Johnson and Keira Ball, became entwined around a single, shared heart when Keira was left brain dead in road traffic collision and her parents decided to donate her organs to others.

“I wanted to try and recreate as faithfully as possible the astonishing journey of Keira’s nine-year-old heart by interviewing all those who helped it resume its beat inside Max’s nine-year-old body – parents, siblings, surgeons, nurses, paramedics, bystanders, organ donation teams, psychologists and light aircraft pilots,” says Rachel. “The grace, courage and resilience of Max and Keira’s families have moved me beyond belief – and the science and history of how doctors successfully mastered the art of transplanting organs is enthralling.”

The Story of a Heart will be published in Sept 2024 by Little, Brown in the UK and Scribner in the US.

Breathtaking has been adapted into a major 3-part televison series to be broadcast on ITV in early 2024. Co-written and executive produced by Rachel, Prasanna Puwanarajah and Line of Duty showrunner Jed Mercurio, it stars Golden Globe winner Joanne Froggatt as an acute medical consultant - and reveals what really happened behind closed hospital doors when Covid hit the NHS. Details here.

Rachel’s TEDxNHS talk, The Best Medicine? Pink Gin and Lemonade explores everything she has learned about helping patients die with comfort and dignity - even (perhaps especially) during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dedicated to, and shared with the consent of, her 93-year-old patient John Carberry - for whom pink gin was the best possible palliative medicine. Available on YouTube here.

Dear Life was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa biography prize. The judges described it as: “A beautifully written, powerfully moving book that tackles an emotive and difficult subject with professional compassion and personal insight.”