Patient by Ben Watt is a short memoir first published in 1996 detailing the Everything But The Girl musician’s diagnosis of the rare life-threatening auto-immune disease Churg-Strauss syndrome. Doctors were baffled by Watt’s debilitating symptoms which saw him hospitalised for two-and-a-half months in the summer of 1992 just before he was about to embark on a tour overseas. The disease triggered by an unknown allergen caused his immune system to attack the blood vessels serving his small intestine, most of which was unable to be saved during surgery. As well as the disease itself and the frustration of not knowing what is causing his symptoms for such a long time, Watt writes about the experience of his long stay in hospital. It’s fair to say the NHS of the early 1990s feels a long way away from where it is at the moment, and also serves as a reminder that from now on there will be a very clear divide between medical memoirs written pre- and post-pandemic. The medical details are grisly, yet Watt’s writing is understated in this short and direct account of serious illness.