Recommendations from our site
“The Tavistock Clinic was—it’s in the process of being shut down or reconstituted—a pioneering institution for the study and treatment of gender dysphoria. When it was set up, it was if not unique, one of very few places where these treatments were offered for children. Hannah Barnes is a journalist with BBC’s Newsnight. In this book she tracks the story of how an institution that was set up with very good intentions to do necessary work lost the run of it, you might say. Things went awry to the point where it was overwhelmed by demand.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Frederick Studemann, Journalist
“Hannah Barnes, who wrote this book, is a Newsnight journalist and had done a lot of work for the BBC revealing what had happened at the Tavistock, a clinic set up in London in 1989 to help kids who are struggling with gender dysphoria. This is a story of bad management in a local center. It also touches on some of the decisions that were made about puberty blockers and the way that young people were treated. What we found really compelling about this story was the detailed research. She interviewed lots and lots of people who had been through the clinic or had worked there.
This is a complex subject that divides opinion, but it’s also important to think carefully about and to be able to talk about and debate, particularly as it’s now been revealed how many children’s lives were changed. They were put on drugs and medication that people had not fully understood, with profound consequences.”
