What the doctor saw

What is striking is how discreet Dr Mathur has been in regard to Mrs Gandhi's health. He could easily have written a completely different book 30 years after her death. But he didn't

Forty years ago I read the diaries of Lord Moran, who was Winston Churchill’s physician. Since then I have wondered why more doctors to Heads of State and governments don’t write about their patients. Imagine what an education that would be.

It was Moran who revealed for the first time, much to the fury of the Conservatives, that Churchill was a sick old man who had had a stroke in 1942. No one was told. Then there was The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zishui, Mao’s personal physician for two decades. Li wrote the book in the early nineties