Retired nurse and Costa Award-winning author Christie Watson has joined the Covid-19 emergency nursing register and is going back into the NHS. Read her incredible No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling memoir of nursing today.

‘It made me cry. It made me think. It made me laugh’ Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt and Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas

Christie Watson was a nurse for twenty years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness.

We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient’s agonising heart-lung transplant, and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.

In our most extreme moments, when life is lived most intensely, Christie is with us. She is a guide, mentor and friend. And in these dark days of division and isolationism, she encourages us all to stretch out a hand.

‘A powerful insight into the life of nurses’ The Times, Books of the Year

‘A remarkable book about life and death and so brilliantly written it makes you hold your breath’ Ruby Wax