Breathtaking (Paperback)

'If you're wondering whether to turn the page and read it, my message is simple: please do' - Michael Rosen

'A searing insider's account of being a doctor during the tsunami of coronavirus deaths ... It says everything about her character that Clarke refuses to settle for despair, focusing on the human decency she has seen' - Independent 

'Clarke has written the UK's human story of Covid. Weaving together stories of patients, families, nurses, doctors and paramedics as the virus spread from New Year's Day to the end of April 2020. She reveals the desperate times and the government's mistakes but also how people from all walks of life - inside the NHS and out - have tried to reach out and show goodness to one another' - Stylist 

'Powerful, uplifting and even reassuring ... Clarke's tone is more intimate, much of the book written at night when she couldn't sleep for fear, fury and frustration - the last two she attributes largely to the inadequacies and lies of politicians. Rage lurks beneath many paragraphs as she lambasts the delays in decisions, and the "number theatre" of statistics. You get the sense of someone trying to remain calm and reasoned, often on the verge of being overcome ... superb' - Madeleine Bunting * Guardian *

'Clarke is a superb storyteller as well as a clear-eyed polemicist ... she writes with such compassion and humanity that you feel you are in the room ... Clarke is certainly on the side of the angels and she has produced much more than a snapshot. Breathtaking is a beautiful, blistering account of a key moment in our history. If I were Boris Johnson, I wouldn't want to read it' - Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 

'Her mood on these final pages is sad but proud and grateful at the way in which the NHS has triumphantly come through the greatest challenge in seventy years' - The Mail on Sunday