RICHARD THE GREAT
Shortly after starting at BJGP in 1999 to edit The Back Pages, I received an email summarising the weekly content of the Big Four Generalist Journals — Lancet, BMJ, NEJM, and JAMA. The author, Richard Lehman, a full-time GP in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The content was laser sharp, effortlessly evidence based, and looked at the quality of the evidence, irrespective of evidence source (often Pharma) and wholly disrespecting the grandeur of the Big Four Generalist Journals. ‘More tosh from the Lancet’, ‘Paradigm-HF epitomises everything that is wrong with heart failure studies’. And so on.
Then more. The style wholly seductive and polymathic. Postscripts re. Plant of the Week. Literary digressions from Sumerian prehistory, to The Anatomy of Melancholy, to Blake and TS Eliot and the great canon of Russian literature. Recipes featuring foraging that pre-date Nomu. Took me too long but eventually signed Richard up for BJGP monthly Flora Medica. Eventually he was brain-hunted by the BMJ — a higher-profile weekly publication and, I sincerely hope, a modest fee.
Two key words. Weekly. Week after week for almost 20 years. For me, and all of my students, and specialist trainees, and postgrad students, and partners. A body of work that is unquestionably one of the greatest publishing achievements by any GP, anywhere, in the last two decades.
And witty. Most columns raised a smile, some a smirk, and occasionally a guffaw. Richard Lehman in late June has written his last blog for the BMJ. We all of us raise a glass of red wine, and a small foraged mushroom tartlet, in his general direction. Thank you!