Why a Booktrail?
1950s: Examining society through the eyes of those locked up in a sanitorium
The Dark Circle
What you need to know before your trail
In the early days of the new NHS, Jewish twins Lenny and Miriam Lynskey both diagnosed with TB are sent from their London homes to a new “santorium” in the Kent countryside.
This sanatorium is just under the new NHS and many people from all walks of life and with all kinds of conditions are brought here together. The twins make friends with many of this disparate bunch of people and form friendships and links with many of them. In return, the twins seem to change the lives of those around them
Travel Guide
Kent
The sanitorium
A bleak bleak place
A dark claustrophobic cold atmosphere. The level of sickness in the air, despair all around and the uneasy existence of the patients having to live side by side in such a place, a former private hospital now open to the masses as it were. And a doctor named Limb….
All patients in the Gwendo are there for new treatments and new wonder drugs but no one knows when and where they will get the drug. They just have to sit and wait and talk to the others in the santorium and become used to the idea that they are stuck there for now and that they can’t go back to London, that they have to stay here and see it through, wait for their treatment. This is a unique place for ill people since people of all ages, are in this together and that there is no preferential treatment for the rich.
The establishment of the NHS also comes at an important time for the development of the country as well as the NHS. This is post war society where racism and anti-semitism is still very much alive. This is a new world and people are starting to see what is possible in health care and in the world in general.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Dark Circle
Author/Guide: Linda Grant Destination: London, Kent Departure Time: 1960s
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