Wrightington Hospital, in the countryside near Wigan, is an accretion of postwar buildings of different eras clustered round an 18th-century mansion. It was sold to Lancashire County Council in 1920 after the death of its last resident, a spendthrift, according to one writer, ‘with a fanatical attachment to blood sports’. The hospital promotes itself as ‘a centre of orthopaedic excellence’. National Health Service hospitals have to promote themselves these days. Earlier this year it survived a brush with closure. It’s neat and scrubbed and slightly worn at the edges, unable to justify to itself that few per cent of the budget the private sector sets aside for corporate sheen, although it does have a museum dedicated to John Charnley, who, almost half a century ago, pioneered the popular benchmark of the NHS’s success or failure, the hip replacement operation.

LRB 22 September 2011 | PDF Download