--- title: John Berger's A Fortunate Man, the 1967 Portrait of a Country Doctor That Still Sends People Into Medicine description: John Berger's A Fortunate Man followed a Forest of Dean GP in 1966. Why doctors still read it on Berger's centenary, and the book that answered it. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-06T16:00:00.038Z updated: 2026-11-06T16:00:00.057Z canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/john-berger-a-fortunate-man image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-30959842.webp categories: Literary Culture content_type: Feature region: England publication: The Quantum of Light schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: John Berger description: John Berger (1926 to 2017) was a British novelist, essayist, art critic and painter, born in Stoke Newington, London, on 5th November 1926. He wrote and presented the 1972 BBC series and book Ways of Seeing, and his novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize. He gave half the prize money to the British Black Panthers and used the other half to write A Seventh Man, his book with the photographer Jean Mohr on migrant workers in Europe. From 1973 he lived in Quincy, a farming village in the Haute-Savoie, where he wrote the trilogy Into Their Labours. He died near Paris on 2nd January 2017, aged 90. url: https://www.johnbergerhome.com jobTitle: Novelist, essayist, art critic and painter sameAs: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berger - https://www.johnbergerhome.com --- John Berger would have turned 100 on 5th November. Most centenary tributes reach for *Ways of Seeing*, the 1972 television series and book that changed how a generation looked at paintings. The Berger book that has travelled furthest from the art world is a slimmer one: *A Fortunate Man*, his 1967 portrait of a country doctor, written with photographs by the Swiss photographer Jean Mohr. Doctors have been passing it to one another for almost 60 years. At least one of them is practising today in the same village where Berger found his subject. ### Book: A Fortunate Man *The Story of a Country Doctor* By John Berger & Jean Mohr In 1966 John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr followed a GP through his surgeries and house calls in the Forest of Dean. First published in 1967, their portrait of the doctor and the community he served remains one of the most widely read books about medicine and care. This Canons edition has an introduction by the GP and writer Gavin Francis. [Canongate](https://canongate.co.uk/books/2244-a-fortunate-man-the-story-of-a-country-doctor/) ## A Fortunate Man and Dr John Sassall In 1966 Berger and Mohr spent several weeks in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, following a GP through his surgeries, his house calls and his nights on call. Berger called him John Sassall. His real name was John Eskell, and he was Berger's own doctor in the village of St Briavels. The book opens with a forester pinned under a fallen tree, and with the calm Sassall brings to the people standing around him. From there Berger moves from patient to patient: the sick, the dying, the lonely and the frightened. He writes about what a village hands to its doctor, and one of his lines still turns up in medical teaching: 'We give the doctor access to our bodies.' Berger calls Sassall fortunate for a plain reason. His work fills his life and justifies it, and Berger thought very few people in modern Britain were given that chance. Later readers have added what the book leaves out. Eskell's wife, Betty, ran the practice and was the link between the doctor and his patients, yet she barely appears in its pages. Eskell lived with bipolar disorder and later died by suicide, which gives the title a weight Berger could not have intended in 1967. ## A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland In 2022 the writer and documentary maker Polly Morland published an answer to Berger's book. She was clearing her late mother's house when a battered paperback fell from behind a bookshelf. It was *A Fortunate Man*, and when she opened it she recognised a photograph of the wooded valley where she lives. Morland went looking for the doctor who serves that valley now. She found a woman GP working in the same practice as Sassall, who had read Berger's book at 17 while considering medical school. Morland followed her for a year, with photographs by Richard Baker, and called the result *A Fortunate Woman*. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize. ### Book: A Fortunate Woman *A Country Doctor's Story* By Polly Morland Clearing her late mother's house, Polly Morland found a copy of John Berger's A Fortunate Man and recognised her own valley in its photographs. She went looking for the doctor who serves that valley today and followed her for a year. With photographs by Richard Baker, the book was shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize. [Pan Macmillan](https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/authors/polly-morland/a-fortunate-woman/9781529071146) Read side by side, the two books cover more than half a century of British general practice. Sassall works alone and is on call day and night. His successor works in a partnership, inside an NHS under far greater strain, and still knows her patients by name. ## Where to Read A Fortunate Man Canongate publishes the book in its Canons series, with an introduction by the GP and writer Gavin Francis. If you have never read Berger, you can begin here: the book runs to fewer than 200 pages, and Mohr's black and white photographs carry as much of the story as the words. The centenary is also a good moment to read Berger's life. Tom Overton's biography, *John Berger: From Life*, came out from Allen Lane this year. In Paris, the Forum des images holds a Berger season of films, talks and readings from 13th to 22nd November. In Norwich, John Berger, A Life of Drawing, the only UK exhibition of his visual art in the centenary year, runs until 21st November. ### Book: John Berger *From Life* By Tom Overton Tom Overton's biography of John Berger, the writer, painter and critic born in Stoke Newington in 1926. Published in the centenary year of Berger's birth, it draws on a large archive of previously unseen material. [Penguin](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295293/john-berger-by-overton-tom/9780241262528) ### Book: Ways of Seeing By John Berger John Berger's book of seven essays, made with the 1972 BBC television series of the same name. It changed the way readers look at paintings, photographs and advertising, and remains one of the most widely read books on art. [Penguin](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/56465/ways-of-seeing-by-berger-john/9780141035796) ### Book: G. By John Berger John Berger's novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize. Its hero, G., is the illegitimate son of an Italian merchant and a wealthy American woman, raised on an English farm at the end of the nineteenth century. He moves through a Europe heading towards the First World War, from the Milan uprising of 1898 to the first flight across the Alps, seducing women as he goes. Berger mixes historical fiction and a coming-of-age story with essays, poems and drawings to write about desire, love and solidarity. This centenary edition from NYRB Classics has a new introduction by Ben Lerner. [Penguin Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/808920/g-by-john-berger/) Earlier this month we told the story of [how Berger used his 1972 Booker Prize speech to name the sugar fortune behind the prize money](https://thequantumoflight.com/article/john-berger-at-100-booker-prize-speech). ## FAQ **Q: What is John Berger's most famous work?** John Berger's most famous work is Ways of Seeing, a four-part BBC television series broadcast in 1972 and a book published the same year. It challenged the way Western art was traditionally taught and remains one of the most widely read books on art. Berger also won the 1972 Booker Prize for his novel G., and his book A Fortunate Man (1967), about a country doctor, is widely read in medicine. **Q: What is John Berger's theory?** John Berger's best-known idea, set out in Ways of Seeing, is that the way you see an image is shaped by what you already know and believe. He held that seeing comes before words, that photography and reproduction changed the meaning of old paintings, and that oil painting and modern advertising share a language of ownership and display.