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  • Published: 15 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9780091941352
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $32.99

A Nurse in Time




A nostalgic nurse's memoir in the bestselling vein of Call the Midwife and Nurse on Call

'It must be stressed from the start that I was not a born nurse. Not every girl is. Not every nurse is either, however wholeheartedly she may throw herself into the project once she gets going. Born nurses can be easily recognised. They have a little something the others haven't got which never seems to desert them however desperate the circumstances may become'

Desperate circumstances were something Evelyn Prentis had to get very used to when she began her life as a nurse. It was in 1934 that Evelyn left home for the first time to enrol as a trainee at a busy Nottingham hospital in the hope of £25 a year.

A Nurse in Time is her affectionate and funny account of those days of dedication and hardship, when never-ending nightshifts, strict Sisters and permanent hunger ruled life, and joy was to be found in a late-night pass and a packet of Woodbines.

  • Published: 15 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9780091941352
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Evelyn Prentis

Brought up in Lincolnshire, Evelyn Prentis (real name Evelyn Taws) left home at eighteen to become a nurse. She later moved to London during the war, where she married and raised her family. Like so many other nurses, she went back to hospital and used any spare time she might have had bringing up her children and running her home. Born in 1915, she died in 2001 at the age of eighty-five.

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Praise for A Nurse in Time

Perceptive, warm and very funny

Sunday Telegraph

Highly amusing and entertaining

Derby Evening Telegraph

Warm and funny ... with her dry humour, eye for life's quirkiness and her charming and self-deprecating manner, Evelyn might not have been a 'born nurse' but she was certainly a born writer. Don't miss her entertaining and often moving story

Lancashire Evening Post

Funny and joyful

Nursing Times