Best-selling author Ian Williams will be attending Hull Medical Society in November for a talk about his work as a GP, comics artist and writer. His graphic novel The Bad Doctor was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, causing Alison Bechdel to declare him as “the best thing to happen to medicine since penicillin”.

Ian has also penned a series of comic strips for The Guardian about the trials and tribulations of working within the NHS, and his novels and comic art are humane, moving and highly witty views onto the contradictions and challenges of modern medicine.

In his follow-up to The Bad Doctor, The Lady Doctor sees Dr Lois Pritchard working in a local health centre as well as her 2-day-a-week stint at the GUM clinic. From the moment we see Dr Lois nipping out behind the surgery for a fag, we know we are in for a behind-the-scenes warts-and-all comedy drama. We meet a patient who regrets the Pinocchio face he had tattooed on his genitals; a man who resorts to desperate measures after being driven mad by his neighbours’ cats, and a prescription drug addict who plans to sue his previous doctors for failing to refuse him the drugs he demanded.

Hardening government attitudes towards drugs and addiction, and patients’ demands to benefit from the re-emergence of psychedelic therapeutic research, don’t make a doctor’s life any easier,  but Ian Williams explores current medical issues and ethics with his trademark lightness of touch and wonderfully sly sense of humour, using his own experience as a practising GP to recreate the lives of both patients and health service practitioners.

Ian’s talk will start at 6.30 pm at Hull Medical Society on Monday 25 November. The talk is free to attend but spaces are limited so do book your ticket HERE beforehand.