I am sorry that your editing staff managed to have my Liverpool-born mother, Freddie Lambert, bombed in Liverpool rather than Cambridge, where the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, a close student friend of hers, helped save her life (but not, sadly, her legs) by pulling her from the fire-wreckage left by a stray German bomb (Made in Stoke-on-Trent, Review, 19 May). I was consequently born in my mother’s home town, Liverpool, where the distinguished obstetrician Professor Jeffcoate, the only person willing to see my mother through the complications caused by the damage to her pelvis, was consultant. Although at the time he usually charged a fee, he celebrated the birth of the National Health Service, and my mother’s courage, by delivering me for nothing. I thus owe my life to the NHS.
Salley Vickers
London
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