Young Country Doctor

Bilbury Chronicles is the first of a series of books describing the adventures (and misadventures) of a young doctor who enters general practice as an assistant to an elderly and rather eccentric doctor in Devon, England. When he arrives in Bilbury, a small village on the edge of Exmoor, the young doctor doesn't realize how much he has to learn. But he soon finds the extent of his ignorance when he meets his patients. There is Anne Thwaites, who gives birth in the middle of a field and local rogue Thumper Robinson, who knows a good many tricks that aren't in any textbooks. And there is Mike Trickle, a TV show host, who causes great excitement when he buys a house in the village. The young doctor's employer is elderly Dr. Brownlow, who lives in a house that looks like a castle, drives an old Rolls Royce, and patches his stethoscope with a bicycle inner tube repair kit. The local pub, the Duck and Puddle, is run by Frank, the inebriate landlord, and the village shop is run by Peter, who also drives the local taxi, delivers the mail, and acts as the local undertaker. There is Miss Johnson, the receptionist with a look that can curdle milk; Mrs Wilson, the buxom district nurse, and Len, her husband, who is the local policeman with an embarrassing secret. And there is Patsy.

Bilbury Grange is the second in Vernon Coleman's series of Young Country Doctor books. The place is the English county of Devon. The time is the 1970s. A young doctor, just married and in a new home (a vast and rambling country house in desperate need of repairs and renovation), has taken over a small village practice when suddenly the authorities decide that the village isn't big enough to have its own doctor. The villagers decide otherwise. Bilbury is the village everyone dreams of living in. It's the village where people speak to strangers and where doors are left unlocked. Bilbury Grange is the story of village life in the 1970s, and it centers on the young doctor and his lovely wife. But it's also about the people who live there, and it is a story of great happiness and joy, some tragedy, and many dramas.

Bilbury Revels is the third in the Young Country Doctor series of books and continues the account of the doctor and his young wife, Patsy, who are settled happily at Bilbury Grange. Disaster strikes during a long, relentless storm which batters the village and blankets the whole area in a thick covering of snow. The doctor nearly loses his life, and the village schoolteacher loses her cottage roof. The excitement really starts when the villagers join together to raise money to repair the devastated cottage. Vernon Coleman describes an old fashioned music hall evening (during which just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong), and one of the funniest cricket matches ever described is reported in Chapters 16 and 17. There is also a village produce show where the locals compete to find out who has grown the biggest and best vegetables. And, as if all that were not enough, the doctor has to promote his first book. He travels to London, makes his first (and hilarious) television appearance, and is invited to speak at a local village hall where things don't go entirely to plan.