Just saying
Rachel Clarke has been a doctor for 15 years. Photo: David Levenson/Getty
Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and former television journalist. ‘The Story of a Heart’, the story of a heart transplant between two children, Keira and Max, was the winner of 2025’s Women’s Prize for non-fiction. Her memoir ‘Breathtaking’ was adapted into a TV series for ITV. She has two children.
I was one of those kids who loved science and art at school. I also had a dad who was a doctor, a mum who was a nurse. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do medicine, it’s just that I almost felt pushed into it, by school mainly, and what I really loved as a kid was writing. I loved being a journalist in many ways, loved the contact with people, and the creativity involved in making films, but really struggled with the toughness required.