'Should be made compulsory reading . . . If it were up to me this clear-sighted yet emotionally charged hymn to the NHS would be added to the curriculum in every high school from Land's End to John O'Groats with immediate effect.' i newspaper

July 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service Act. To Provide All People is the intimate story of the NHS in British society today, written by novelist, poet and dramatist Owen Sheers. Depicting 24 hours, with a regional hospital at the centre of the action, the poem charts an emotional and philosophical map of the NHS against the personal experiences that lie at its heart; from patients to surgeons, porters to midwives. This is a world of transformative pains, triumphs, losses and celebrations and joins us all in our universal experiences of health and sickness, birth and death, regardless of race, gender or wealth.

Informed by over seventy hours of interviews, the work is punctuated with the historical narrative of the birth of the NHS Act. To Provide All People was filmed by Vox Pictures/BBC Wales.

A film-poem by the author of Pink Mist and The Green Hollow to mark the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service Act's passage into law.

About the Author
Owen Sheers is a poet, novelist and playwright. Twice winner of the Wales Book of the Year, his books of poetry include Skirrid Hill, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and the verse drama Pink Mist, winner of the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. In 2018 he was awarded the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award. Owen's theatrical work includes The Two Worlds of Charlie F., winner of the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, Mametz, and National Theatre Wales's seventy-two hour The Passion. Chair of Wales PEN Cymru and Professor in Creativity at Swansea University, he lives in the Black Mountains of Wales with his wife and two daughters.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571348084
Author Owen Sheers
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 109g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 7mm