The Trauma Chronicles

Dr Stephen Westaby

Mar 2023 · Bolinda · Narrated by Gordon Griffin

About this audiobook

'Never, never, never give in'. Winston Churchill's famous quotation best sums up the life of Stephen Westaby, the world-leading cardiothoracic surgeon. This book chronicles the triumphs and failures of his surgical life, the lives saved and extended, the innovations he developed (such as artificial hearts) and his research discoveries. Having spent his childhood in the backstreets of a northern steel town, he went on to become one of the world's foremost heart surgeons. His drive for perfection in his profession took him to the world-renowned Harefield Hospital, the foremost heart surgery centre in Birmingham, Alabama, and the newly-created Cardiothoracic Centre in Oxford. Then in 2019 in Wuhan, he was the first Western doctor to learn about COVID-19 before the virus was identified.

About the author

Gordon Griffin has had a long and successful career as an actor in theatre and television. He’s appeared in TV classics ranging from Family at War to The Crown and in the theatre has played in Shakespeare at Chichester and was in the very first national tour of the musical Godspell. He’s presented Play School and sung on BBC tv’s successful music-hall series The Good Old Days. But it’s as a multi-award winning audiobook reader that Gordon is best known. He has over 950 recordings to his credit ranging from Dickens, Hardy and Orwell to Hilary Mantel, Melvyn Bragg and Chris Ryan. For his services to audiobooks he received an MBE from The Queen in the Birthday Honours of 2017. His autobiography Speaking Volumes was published in 2019 followed in 2020 by the audio version read of course by Gordon himself!