The Citadel

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In the small Welsh mining village, the men, as miners, can change doctors through a company insurance scheme whenever they wish, their choices often based on the doctor's own popularity rather than his ability. Manson is outspoken and critical of the way in which the service is funded which lands him in trouble. Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/citadel. Accessed 31 May 2020. Cooper, Goolistan (6 April 2015). "Plaque for Notting Hill GP who became celebrated author". My London . Retrieved 15 January 2023.

Andrew is a poor Scotsman, newly graduated from medical school. He finds a position as an assistant in the mining valleys of Wales - of course, the system is unfair, but he's a great doctor and makes friends within the community. Then he's pushed out, and moves to another mining community where, now newly married, he continues his iconoclastic ways. Again he's pushed out and finally moves to London, where he becomes enamoured with Money and Position and Good Clients. Essentially, he's become everything he derided earlier in his career; his wife, however, still wants the simple life ("one bedroom and a kitchen" would be ok with her). Because there are no surprises here, by the end of the book he's returned to those good values, planning a new practice with two men who are also Good Doctors. It is claimed, with some justification, that the book strongly influenced the result of the 1945 British general election, when the voters rejected the war hero Churchill in favour of the less charismatic social reformer, the Labour leader Attlee. This Labour government established the NHS in 1948. The seeds of the NHS were sown in Tredegar, home town of the NHS’s architect, Aneurin Bevan. Cronin spent three formative years in this town (“Aberlaw” in The Citadel). The Medical Aid Societies set up by the Miners’ unions in South Wales inspired Bevan to extend free health care to the entire nation. In Adventures in Two Worlds, Cronin says: “In actual fact this scheme can definitely be regarded as the foundation of the plan of socialized medicine which was eventually adopted by Great Britain. Aneurin Bevan, who was mainly responsible for the national project, and at one time a miner at Tredegar, and here, under the local aid organization, the value of prompt and gratuitous treatment for the worker was strongly impressed upon him.” Launching the NHS, Bevan said: “All I am doing is extending to the entire population of Britain the benefits we had in Tredegar for a generation or more. We are going to “Tredegarise” you”8. Bevan and Cronin are not known to have met, but, given their mutual connections with Tredegar and their fame, it would seem highly likely that they did. The program was partly filmed on location in Tredegar, Wales, where A. J. Cronin practised as a doctor with the Tredegar Medical Aid Society prior to writing the novel, as well as in Merthyr Tydfil, Garlane House in Beaufort, Blaenau Gwent, in Wales and Prague. His experience with the Tredegar Medical Aid Society shaped the "Aberalaw" section of the novel. [2] Reception [ edit ] MacPherson, Hamish (3 January 2021). "AJ Cronin: The doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland". The National. Glasgow . Retrieved 15 January 2023. Cronin also came to feel, "If we consider the physical universe... we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator.... Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientific doctrine of natural causes. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound. Ex nihilo nihil, as the Latin tag of our schooldays has it: nothing can come of nothing." This was brought home to him in London, where in his spare time he had organised a working boys' club. One day he invited a distinguished zoologist to deliver a lecture to the members. The speaker, adopting "a frankly atheistic approach", described the sequence of events leading to the emergence, "though he did not say how," of the first primitive life-form from lifeless matter. When he concluded, there was polite applause. Then, "a mild and very average youngster rose nervously to his feet," and with a slight stammer asked how there came to be anything in the first place. The naïve question took everyone by surprise. The lecturer "looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly turned red. Then, before he could answer, the whole club burst into a howl of laughter. The elaborate structure of logic offered by the test-tube realist had been crumpled by one word of challenge from a simple-minded boy." [12] Family [ edit ] Cronin with family in 1938

Cronin’s life is thus of interest, as it provides the key themes for his fiction: the poor scholarship boy who overcomes bigotry and poverty to qualify as a doctor; the idealistic young doctor struggling against ignorance and a corrupt medical hierarchy; the disillusioned middle-aged man who despite his wealth and comfort, longs for the excitement and moral certainties of his life as a doctor; the devout Catholic who has betrayed his wife and his principles. Mausam ( "Seasons", from the novel The Judas Tree), directed by Gulzar, featuring Sharmila Tagore, Sanjeev Kumar, Dina Pathak, and Om Shivpuri Rivett GC. From Cradle to Grave, the first 50 years of the NHS. London: King’s Fund and www.nhshistory.net The Campbell Playhouse: The Citadel". Orson Welles on the Air, 1938–1946. Indiana University Bloomington. 21 January 1940 . Retrieved 29 July 2018.

Ethics, both medical and personal, is a central theme. How to live a life and the road toward finding one’s own way is movingly portrayed. Life’s ups and down, happiness and sorrow--both are here. The reader observes the allure of money and fame and the depths to which they can bring a person. This was a very important element of the story for me!Historical information is captivatingly drawn. At the same time facts are informatively presented. There is a good balance of heart and head.

Further Adventures of a Country Doctor (twelve late-1930s short stories, collected in 2017), ISBN 978-1543289190All about the doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland". The National. 3 January 2021 . Retrieved 13 August 2023. In his new position, Manson is able to do productive research on the relationship between coal-dust inhalation and the silicosis which plagues the miners. Yet here, too, he runs afoul of a local anti-vivisectionist faction due to his reliance on using animals in his experiments. His next career move finds him working with Whitehall's Coal and Metalliferous Mines Fatigue Board, where he is shunted into the meaningless projects of whimsical bureaucrats, whose indolence he despises. A.J. Cronin: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland". www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk . Retrieved 13 August 2023. Dacă persistăm, încercând doar să dovedim că toate merg de minune în meseria noastră, și că, în afară de meseria noastră, nu mai există nimic bun - atunci, într-adevăr, aceasta înseamnă moartea progresului științific." During the First World War, Cronin served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war he trained at hospitals that included Bellahouston Hospital and Lightburn Hospital in Glasgow and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. He undertook general practice at Garelochhead, a village on the River Clyde, and in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published over the next few years. Cronin drew on his medical experience and research into the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels – The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a busy medical practice of his own in Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for the Whiteleys department store at the time and had an increasing interest in ophthalmology.