NOBLE VENTURES

Heroes of Our Time

As a child with a growing reading habit to feed, I came across an old book my Dad had received as a 10^th birthday present in 1944. Aside from Boadicea (as she was then known) and Joan of Arc, “Noble Ventures” by C Bernard Rutley was a collection of male tales of derring-do, including Richard the Lionheart (‘The King Who Loved Fighting’); Robert Clive (‘The Clerk Who Won an Empire’), and James Wolfe (‘The Man Who Gave Canada to the Empire’). And nerdy young person that I was, I loved it.

Recently I came across the book again, and as soon as I started reading it, I began to wince for all the ventures I once considered noble. No more heroes anymore, you might say. But it also made me realise how much I still love to read true stories of extraordinary people….except now they are much more likely to be ordinary extraordinary people. Truly inspiring figures who, instead of conquering swathes of territory by force, make a forceful contribution of a much more caring kind. Here are some of my favourites.

WAR DOCTOR by David Nott

“I have travelled the world in search of trouble. It is a kind of addiction, a pull I find hard to resist”.

For the past three decades, surgeon David Nott has been taking unpaid leave from his day job in the NHS to work in the world’s war and disaster zones – and training others to do so.

From his first voluntary posting to Sarajevo in 1993 to his dangerous stints working in clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo in Syria, Nott’s utterly compelling memoir propels you through a whole gamut of emotions, chief among them a profound admiration both for him and for those who work alongside him. It’s also a rigorously honest read in which Nott details his own breakdown with PTSD after working in Syria, and explains the “selfish” reasons why he continues to put himself in harm’s way.

An awe-inspiring story of hope lighting the darkest of times and places.

AFTER THE DUST SETTLES by Lucy Easthope

“Each disaster is seared into my brain and has nudged and shaped every aspect of my life and my very self”.

Involved in the response to almost every major disaster of the past two decades, including the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, 9/11, the 7/7 London bombings, Grenfell, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Professor Lucy Easthope is the UK’s leading authority on how we both plan for, and recover from such seismic events.

Her outstanding ‘professional confessional’, “When the Dust Settles” is a deeply humane account of her Liverpool childhood, what drew her to take on such work, and how she steels herself to tackle the worst of human scenarios. With positivity and even humour, she also shares many stories of raw humanity in the face of disaster, and reflects on how, with care and compassion, we can rebuild people’s lives after the dust has settled.

THE LANGUAGE OF KINDNESS by Christie Watson

“Nursing has taken so much from me but has given me back even more”.

Prior to writing this memoir of her nursing career, Christie Watson was already an acclaimed novelist, having won the 2011 Costa First Novel Award for “Tiny Sunbirds Far Away”. So you might expect her first non-fiction book to be beautifully crafted, and indeed it is. But this page-turning account of how nurses routinely mine the tender parts of their souls to dispense care and compassion in increasingly challenging conditions, also packs massive emotional impact.

You’ll laugh as Watson mistakes a takeaway delivery man for a doctor. You’ll cry as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire. Then, as she sits by her own father’s bedside, freed by an amazing Macmillan nurse just to keep vigil and speak final words of love before he dies, everything else falls away as she shows us that sooner or later in all our lives, nothing else will matter but the language of kindness.

A remarkable reflection on care, empathy and compassion.

THE LIGHTLESS SKY by Gulwali Passarlay with Nadine Ghouri

“After all my awful experiences, I don’t want to waste a single second. I came here and I want to make a difference. I don’t just take. I give back.”

In 2006, with her sons in danger from both the US military and the Taliban, 12-year-old Gulwali Passarlay’s mother paid people-traffickers to get him and his brother Hazrat out of Afghanistan and to “safety” in Europe. Separated from Hazrat almost immediately, Passarlay endured a horrifying, snakes and ladders journey across eight countries before he made it to the UK.

The full, heart-in-mouth story of that journey is told in this courageous memoir. It is Passarlay’s story, but also a story of our times. After claiming asylum in the UK, he found a home with supportive foster parents. His strength of character and determination was such that after only two years of secondary education he had learned English and gained 10 GCSEs, graduating a few years later with a degree from the University of Manchester. Passarlay has spent the past decade advocating tirelessly on behalf of fellow refugees worldwide. He has been true to his word of not wasting a second.

ALL THE YOUNG MEN by Ruth Coker Burks with Kevin Carr O’Leary

“If I have one message with this book it’s that we all have to care for one another”.

In 1986, Ruth Coker Burks, a young straight, white single mum living in Arkansas paid a visit to a friend in hospital. She noticed the nurses’ reluctance to enter a nearby room, and on impulse decided to go in herself. Immediately she was moved to care for the young man inside.

In that moment, a lifetime of activism and advocacy for LGBTQ+ people began. Coker Burks was the only one in her community willing to help the many young gay men afflicted and stigmatised by the growing AIDS crisis; finding them housing, delivering meals and medication, and arranging burials when the upstanding Christian families of her “guys” would have nothing more to do with their sons. In so doing she faced outright hostility and ostracism, but forged deep friendships with the men she helped.

Coker Burns is a ‘do-gooder’ with sass and while this modern-day Good Samaritan story will move you to tears, it will also lift your spirits high.