ABSTRACT
By the 1960s the British Raj was a rapidly fading communal memory of thick ruby port voices on late-night radio programmes discussing tiger shoots. The subcontinent was divided into the two Pakistans, East and West, Muslim in creed, with India in the middle, now populated mainly by Hindus and Sikhs. Independence had been granted as recently as 1947, but the only legacies remaining to the average Englishman were dark curry houses with furry wallpaper and golden elephants on the walls, and the National Health Service. At this juncture in history, all general hospitals in ordinary unglamorous towns were staffed almost exclusively by doctors from the subcontinent. The plum consultant jobs were still mostly in the hands of UK graduates, but the senior registrar, registrar, senior house officer and houseman posts were 95% Asian. The British graduates clustered into the teaching hospitals, the centres of excellence, bastions of privilege and prejudice, where dark faces were rarely seen and then only at monthly district meetings.
