Books

Cancer & people with learning disabilities
by James Hogg, John Northfield and John Turnbull.
Bild publications: ISBN 1 902519 73 6

This review was commissioned by the department of health to provide background information for "Valuing people: a new strategy for learning disability for the 21st century" - the government's strategy for people with learning disabilities in England. One of the central aims of this strategy is to enable people with learning disabilities to derive full benefit from mainstream services of the NHS. The national cancer plan makes specific reference to the needs of people with learning disabilities. We need to ensure that health education programmes are accessible to people who may have problems in understanding the written word. Because people with learning disabilities may not be able to report their symptoms we also need to know how to improve rates of early diagnosis through regular surveillance and health checks. We need to achieve a better understanding of how to ensure that people with learning disabilities co-operate with the complex treatment regimes now deployed to treat cancer. Professor James Hogg is director of the White Top research unit.

A Twentieth Century Life
by Paul Henderson Scott
Argyll publishing: ISBN 1 902831 36 5

"A Twentieth Century Life"- Paul Henderson Scott's lively and readable autobiography charts his days through the army, his time in the foreign office and then his return to Scotland, nationalist politics and his spell as Rector of the University of Dundee. It is in very warm terms that he describes the University: "I greatly enjoyed my three years as Rector of Dundee University both in participation in the decision of University Court and in my relations with the students. Staff and students together were a coherent community which remained cheerful and optimistic, despite the pressures and problems inflicted on the university by a government whose chief objective seemed to be the reduction of expenditure." On the role of rector he says: "I have always valued the institution in the four ancient universities and in Dundee of Rectors, elected by the students, as something more than a picturesque mediaeval survival. It gives an elected representative of the students a voice on the University Court, which is the governing body of the University." Paul Scott was rector of the University between 1989 and 1992.

Book of the month sponsored by John Simth & Son booksellers
Our book of the month for March will be 'Coastliners' by Joanne Harris. Normal RRP £10.99 - our price - £7.33

"From the author of Chocolat, Blackberry Wine & Five Quarters of the Orange comes this wonderful new novel about a tiny Breton island community, and Mado a spirited local girl who returns after a ten year absence to find her home threatened both by the tides and the schemes of a local entrepreneur. A tale of good against evil, and buried secrets from the past that continue to haunt the present."

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