Breathtaking author Rachel Clarke's life - war hero husband to career change
Palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke witnessed the horrors of the frontline first hand.
It's weeks before the UK's first national lockdown and Dr Clarke is surrounded by patients dying in hospital beds alone, colleagues falling fatally ill and PPE on rations.
The medic, 52, is the bestselling author of Breathtaking, which has been turned into a three-part series on ITV. The drama is based on Rachel's book and is set in a fictional big-city hospital, with Downton Abbey actress Joanne Froggatt playing consultant Dr Abbey Henderson.
Whilst working on the frontline during the pandemic in 2020, Rachel kept a daily diary for comfort and didn't plan for it to become public. But after witnessing the Government 'misinform and lie' to the public, Rachel felt she couldn't stay silent anymore and published her heartbreaking and moving experiences.
Joanne Froggatt portrays the NHS consultant Dr Abbey Henderson in Breathtaking (Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
The ITV series is based on Rachel's reality at the beginning of the Covid pandemic (Matthew Chattle/REX/Shutterstock)Of the series, Rachel said: "There is so much misinformation and rewriting of history around what really happened inside our hospitals during the pandemic. The truth is, NHS staff gave everything they had in impossible conditions that sometimes cost them their lives.
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"It is an honour to try and depict the courage and decency of my NHS colleagues on screen, and I'm so grateful to ITV and HTM Television for giving me the chance to show the public the truth." Former junior hospital doctors Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah also helped to adapt Rachel's book for the screen.
Rachel, a mum of two, has been a medic for two decades, after attending medical school in 2003 and qualifying as a doctor in 2009. But before her career in medicine, she studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and became a broadcast journalist. Admitting she had 'imposter syndrome', she decided to retrain in her late twenties and started studying science A-levels at night school before joining medical school at University College London.
In her early thirties, she met her husband, Dave, then a fighter pilot, through a mutual friend. He was suggested as someone she could have a fling with, but they only managed one date before circumstance tore them apart and she was sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo to make a documentary about the civil war while he fought in the Gulf war.
But they were brought back together months later when Dave emailed out of the blue and told her how he felt. "Our second date was a year after the first date. We were just telling each other we loved each other and how many babies we wanted to have. It was astonishing," she told The Guardian. "My own family couldn’t believe it. When my brother met him for the first time, he said: 'No offence, Rach, but he does actually look like Tom Cruise. You are really punching above your weight here.'"
They went on to have two children and have been married for 19 years. Dave now works in commercial aviation.
Around six years ago, Rachel combined her journalism and medical skills to write her first book, Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story. Three years later, in 2020, her second book Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love, Loss and Consolation, became a bestseller. In 2021, she published her third, Breathtaking, based on her diary entries.
She told of her heartbreak as patients arrived and she knew they'd never see a human face again, or how most victims were too sick to make it to intensive care. Sometimes, between six to eight patients died on her Covid ward in one day. "The hideous, industrial scale of death after death after death - it was utterly horrific," she told The Guardian.
"And I say that as someone who is very used to death and dying." She explained it felt like she was in "a submarine that you couldn't escape from," as oxygen ran out before the first lockdown, and patients were forced to die alone with only a masked medic for comfort.
Rachel was a journalist in her twenties and has now published three books about being a doctor (Daily Mirror/Ian Vogler)"Whenever I talk about the pandemic with colleagues there are tears," she told ITV. Rachel and her colleagues were called heroes, but she said, they were just ordinary human beings doing their jobs and trying to be brave. Then after the Dominic Cummings scandal - as the former Chief Advisor breached lockdown rules - she had enough of being quiet and made her diary public.
Speaking about the 'Government's lies' during the pandemic, Rachel told the Metro: "Boris Johnson lied over and over again when they claimed that the NHS was not overwhelmed. We were rationing care."
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Of the former PM and former Health Secretary Matt Hancock - who broke social distancing rules by hooking up with his aide - Rachel added: "It's unforgivable. It'll make me burn with rage for the rest of my life that they both stood up in front of the British public and lied." She said the pair owe all 1.3 million NHS staff members a 'massive apology'.
The frontline medic believes it is incredibly important to tell the story of Covid to prevent 'historical revisionism', whereby officials deny that major events took place. She told the publication: "The legacy of this pandemic is ongoing. It's not done and dusted. Covid is still around." Over 230,000 deaths have been attributed to Covid and over 100,000 people are living with long Covid.
ITV has described its latest drama as a tale based on real experiences of NHS staff and patients during the pandemic, but explained the hospital and characters have been "created for dramatic purposes". So while the story is Rachel's truth, the characters are fictional.
Director Craig Viveiros said the miniseries, shot in Northern Ireland last year, was filmed in long, real-time sequences to "allow the audience to be immersed in the struggles our real-life heroes faced in the wards and emergency departments across the country". He added: "This story is a chance for their voices and sacrifices to be seen and heard."
Speaking about landing the role of Abbey, Golden Globe winner Joanne said: "When I first read the incredible scripts, they moved me to tears on many occasions. I felt so passionately that I had to be a part of telling this story, the real story, of what was really happening behind the closed doors of the hospitals during the pandemic."
The actress added: "Our NHS staff are nothing less than absolute heroes in my eyes, and I hope telling this story goes a little way towards us understanding their truth, their lived experience and honouring their unbelievable commitment and sacrifice on behalf of us all."
- Breathtaking continues on ITV1 at 9pm tonight.
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