AGAINST THE GRAIN

About the Book

School days in Guiana, Glasgow and Fife, two years in the Army and six years studying Medicine turned the boy into a doctor. Dreaming dreams with Avril, their marriage, their family and their affinity for common spiritual and material values set them on a pilgrimage of repeated challenges. Three years in a mission hospital in apartheid South Africa, conflicting interests of specialization and family responsibilities didn't deter the writer from returning to South Africa to develop the Orthopaedic Service for the Transkei before settling in Halifax, West Yorkshire. In time another phase of life beckoned. Ordained to the ministry in the United Reformed Church, churches in Newcastle, Ashington, the Borders, Pietermaritzburg, have all heard the sermon on the Hip Joint. Changing attitudes in Medicine and the Church, as in society worldwide are described from a personal, family, often humorous perspective as the journey Against the Grain unfolds.

About the Author

A retired minister of the United Reformed Church, William J. Nicol, (Bill), MB ChB (St. Andrews), FRCS Ed, BA (OU), MSc in African Studies (Edinburgh) trained at Mansfield College, Oxford, and was Ordained in 1990. Before this and pastorates in Newcastle upon Tyne, Ashington, Hobkirk and other border towns, Bill was a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal Halifax Infirmary where he specialized in hip replacement surgery. He has travelled widely, notably to South Africa. His home is now in Kelso.