Posters, protests, and prescriptions

This book provides new analysis of Britain's National Health Service as a cultural, not only a political, phenomenon.

The National Health Service has provided Britain's healthcare since 1948. This institution has been the subject of terse political debate since its inception and has had a number of complex reforms and restructures. Yet, the meanings of the NHS are not only - or even primarily lived out in politics. Nearly every Briton comes into contact with the NHS from cradle to grave and this system of healthcare shapes society, culture and everyday life. This book charts these multiple meanings, looking at the NHS as a site of work, activism and consumerism, as a space and in cultural representations. Looking in these ways, the book shows how and why the NHS has become a symbol of Britishness and object of fierce protectiveness, even love, today.