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Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and the author of three Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction books. The most recent of these, Breathtaking (2021), was adapted into an acclaimed television series, broadcast on ITV in 2024. It reveals how she and her colleagues confronted the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Dear Life (2020), depicting her work in an NHS hospice, was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize. Your Life in My Hands (2017) documents life as a junior doctor. Before going to medical school, Rachel was a broadcast journalist. She produced and directed current affairs documentaries focusing on subjects such as Al Qaeda, the Iraq War and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She continues to write regularly for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Lancet among others, and appears regularly on television and radio. Inspired by a visit to Ukraine during the conflict in late 2022, Rachel founded a UK-registered charity, Hospice Ukraine, which supports the work of local palliative care teams in Ukraine.
Profoundly moving and at the same time wildly inspiring. A beautiful, humane book... Even hearing a sliver of this story would make you hunger to learn every possible detail, and rare is the writer who could pull it together so beautifully * Rob Delaney * The Story of a Heart is the best narrative non-fiction I've read in years. Rachel Clarke has written a profound piece of investigative journalism and wrapped it up in poetry. A story of death - and life, and how one incredible family gifted a miracle to another * Christie Watson * An extraordinary story, beautifully told * Adam Kay * Rachel Clarke [is] a physician who is also an uncommonly good writer... The Story of a Heart is never mawkish. It is instead a clear-eyed act of investigative journalism; Clarke knows her subject and does the legwork too * Prospect * What a book . . . The perfect book * Chris Evans on Virgin Radio * Telling this true story with dramatic pace, medical precision and characteristic warmth, The Story of a Heart is Rachel Clarke's finest book yet * Financial Times * Clarke, the author of the superb Dear Life and the coruscating Covid expose Breathtaking, is the right person to tell the extraordinary story of how one family's grief was transformed into a lifesaving act of generosity. The Story of a Heart is tender and inspiring and displays all Clarke's usual compassion for the dead and why they deserve to be honoured * Independent * Remarkable * Cosmopolitan * The Story of a Heart is beautifully written and utterly vital * iPaper * This is a gripping story of two remarkable families, a remarkable heart and a remarkable organ donor system, faultlessly told * BGJP * This is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL and riveting book: written with such humanity, empathy and knowledge, such tact and drama and eloquence. Vital reading, lifelong revelation * Laura Cumming * Clarke could not have rendered this story more tenderly... this is humane writing * The Times * As tense and nerve-racking as any thriller * Mail on Sunday * A moving account * Daily Mirror * The Story of a Heart makes for a compelling read, peppered with Clarke's often startlingly poetic descriptions and frequent detours into the fascinating history of transplantation * Radio Times * Clarke brilliantly interweaves the tragic story that links the two children with that of the medical staff who looked after Keira in her final hours and those who helped her heart to give Max new life. It is obviously an incredibly emotional piece, but Clarke's ability to balance the children's stories with the medical ones offers some hope in a dark place * Sunday Times * The extraordinary journey of a young girl's heart to a young boy's body is told in an accessible, humane way... There are moments, within this intricate tapestry, where Clarke's evocative, empathetic writing makes you catch your breath * Guardian, Book of the Day * This emotional story explores how one bereaved family helped save the life of another child and looks at the medical advances over the years that made it all possible... 5 stars * Sun *
