Tony Atkinson spent his early days suspended in a cage outside the sixth-storey window of his family home in 1920s London. So perhaps he was always destined to see the world differently, and to land in ridiculous, hilarious situations. There was the time he came between Winston Churchill and his bowel movements (an accident that required a parliamentary explanation) or the high-society shenanigans he witnessed after accidentally becoming footman to Queen Elizabeth - all just tasters from this wickedly funny, deeply touching and irresistibly charming memoir.

Tony and the love of his life came across the pond as 'ten-pound Poms'. While he forged a successful career as an anaesthetist, his greatest gift may be for telling rousing tales. A Prescribed Life is a warm and engaging chronicle about love, medicine and royalty spanning almost a century of great change.