The Young Physician

The Young Physician focuses on the public school and medical student days of the central character Edwin Ingleby in the years before the Great War. Born in Halesby [Halesowen], the son of a chemist and with an ailing mother ambitious for her son, Edwin experiences the ups and downs of school life and subsequently the rigours of the five-year training at the medical school of North Bromwich [Birmingham]. Brett Young explores in a gentle tolerant way what forms Edwin's character - his mother's Welsh background, his father's Somerset relations - and provides insights into the range of people he encounters in Halesby and North Bromwich, from the rich to the poor, the self-centred to the humble and appreciative. Edwin's education is set against the background of North Bromwich's development as a city and the recognition of the new University's medical school.