Gavin Francis

GP, writer and Head of Admissions.

Name: Gavin Francis

Category: Current staff member

Role: GP, writer and Head of Admissions

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

Moody portrait of Gavin with skeletons in the background

 Born in Ayrshire, Gavin grew up in Fife and studied in Edinburgh. He did an intercalated BSc in Neuroscience in 1996 and qualified in medicine in 1999, before doing house jobs in Dunfermline's Queen Margaret Hospital, A&E training in the old Royal Infirmary at Lauriston Place and GP training in Portobello. 

Since then he has worked in the Arctic, Antarctic, India and Africa, and closer to home as a GP in Newington, Orkney and Mull.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of General Practitioners. 

He is the author of 11 books of non-fiction including among others: Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins, which was SMIT Scottish Book of the Year 2013 and was shortlisted for the Costa, Ondaatje, Banff, & Saltire Prizes; Adventures in Human Being, which won the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2015, was the Observer’s Science Book of the Year and winner in the BMA Book Awards; Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change, which was The Sunday Times and Scotsman book of the year; and Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence (2022), which was a Sunday Times bestseller. 

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