`Powerful and affecting' Mail on Sunday

`Flesh and Blood is living drama extracted like buried treasure from old documents and the hand-me-down stories of his relatives. I couldn't put it down'Jenny Agutter

'Intelligently structured and eloquently written, McGann's book is a powerful homage to his family and Irish ancestry, to modern medicine and the welfare state. Packed with lively anecdotes and insights on social history, Flesh and Blood is a humble human story with a majestic theme' Times Literary Supplement.

'Drama and reality repeatedly intersect in unexpected ways in this powerful and revealing memoir' Mail on Sunday

'Eloquent in its metaphors, this book is about memory, how it shapes us, and what we choose to pass on' Irish Times

'With its mix of readable science and passionate sensibility, Flesh and Blood is essentially an attempt to heal the old rift between science and art' Radio Times


His family survived famine-ravaged Ireland in the 1850s.

His ancestors settled in poverty-rife Victorian Liverpool, working to survive and thrive.

Some of them became soldiers serving on the Western Front.

One would be the last man to step off the SS Titanic as it sank beneath the icy waves. He would testify at the inquest.

This is their story.

Stephen McGann is Doctor Turner in the BBC hit-drama series Call the Midwife.

Flesh and Blood is the story of the McGann family as told through seven sicknesses - diseases, wounds or ailments that have afflicted Stephen's relatives over the last century and a half, and which have helped mould him into what he now perceives himself to be. It's the story of how health, or the lack of it, fuels our collective will and informs our personal narrative. Health is the motivational antagonist in the drama of our life story - circumscribing the ext