Feature: How early trauma spurred Sir Kenneth Calman to a life in medicine

Sir Kenneth with his daughter, stand-up and broadcaster Susan Calman, last year after she was awarded an honorary degree from Glasgow University. As chancellor, he presented her with the honour.

But there’s one memory from my childhood that overshadows all others. On 25 June 1951, Norman, my younger brother, was looking out of the window of our council flat hoping to see Dad coming whistling up the street when he saw a policeman opening our gate. Seconds later there was a knock on our main door. Mum went down and he told her that she’d better get to the Western Infirmary, because my dad had just been taken there. My mother sent us out to play football.

We were playing in the next street a couple of hours or so later when one of the neighbours came to find us and told us that we were wanted back home. The two of us went up the stairs and into the lounge. It was packed out with relatives. They all looked up at us with pity in their eyes. I forget who it was who told us that my father had just died of a heart attack.

Dad had been to see the doctor that morning about something quite trivial – yet as he was being examined, he had symptoms of a heart attack. The GP told him he should go straight to hospital. He took a bus to Western Infirmary, where he collapsed and died at the porter’s gate. He was just 41. I was nine and my brother only six years old.

For most of my life since that day, I’ve wondered what it would take to make a heavy smoker like my father stop. When I was Chief Medical Officer, first for Scotland, and then for England, working out an answer to that question that would apply to everyone was a key part of my job. How do you stop someone smoking? My father had died only a year after the first definitive evidence of the link between smoking and lung cancer emerged, but now we know the facts about what we need to do to lead healthy lives, how can we persuade people to act on them?

Money was always tight – in fact, there wasn’t any, apart from my mother’s small widow’s pension. So she began to take in boarders, starting with two physical education teachers from the nearby Jordanhill College. She replaced her double bed with two singles and the two students took over that bedroom. Norman and I shared the other one. Mum slept on a pull-down bed in the lounge. When I look back, I am still amazed to think of how much she did for us all, as a single mother bringing up two young boys.

The only problem was that our flat was now completely full. There wasn’t anywhere for me to do my homework. In the evening, mum would put her feet up in front of the television. The students would either work in their own room or join her in the lounge. Either way, there wasn’t anywhere else I could get out my books and study. But I wasn’t going to be put off so easily. To the right at the top of our stairs, between the bedroom and the lounge, there was a small cupboard space. Technically, it was a walk-in cupboard, because it had a door and you could walk in, although it was only four-foot deep and little more than the width of the door. There was a waist-high shelf at which I could sit and, using it as a desk, spread out my books while everyone’s coats and jackets hung on hooks behind me. There was just one drawback: the walk-in cupboard didn’t have an electric light, so I used candles placed in a tin box. So that is where it all began, in a cupboard, my learning and writing, both of which have brought me great happiness.

The subtitle of my book is “Adventures in life, learning and happiness”. My progress from the cupboard began as a medical student which was great fun and made lots of lifelong friends. Incidentally, I also met my wife on the back of a lorry while I was playing the banjo in a student jazz band. My next move was to be a trainee surgeon with a developing interest in vascular and transplant surgery. In 1974, I became the first professor of oncology in Scotland. This was a time of changes in treatment and investigation and also of great hope.

I also realised that patients and their families knew more about cancer that I did, and we wanted to learn from them so I invited them to our home to learn more, and a patient organisation Tak Tent (take care) was born. Of all the things I’ve done, taking a lead on patient-centred cancer treatment is probably the one thing of which I’m most proud, and it helped establish our oncology unit at Gartnavel General Hospital as a centre of excellence and innovation. My interest in education led me to become Dean of Postgraduate Medical Education at Glasgow University, and then, with some trepidation, to the post of Chief Medical Officer in Scotland and subsequently in England. The issues which dominated that time were HIV infection and BSE.

In 1998 another change of career direction took me to Durham University, where I was Vice Chancellor for nine years, before becoming Chancellor of my old University in Glasgow. Traditionally, all chancellors have their own stall in the university chapel, with their coat of arms and motto above it. My own motto is “Cum Scientia Succurro” (“Through knowledge I help others”) and it’s one I have tried – and still try – to live up to.

I have long been interested in the arts and health and have helped to establish this as an important field of study. I have also been privileged to be involved with both the National Trust for Scotland and the National Library of Scotland, which reflect my two other passions – for Scotland and for books. The year I spent chairing the Commission on Scottish Devolution just over a decade ago also taught me so many more things I never even realised about this great country.

So what about my happiness? I have always had an interest in religion, and my faith has given me the love to help others and as a consequence, though not the primary reason, these activities have brought me great happiness. I have had sad times, and opportunities missed, but other doors seem always to have opened.

None of my life has been planned and I have taken opportunities as they came. In the words of Harry Potter: “It is not our attributes which make us what we are, but our choices”.

It Started in a Cupboard: Adventures in Life, Learning and Happiness by Kenneth Calman, is published by Luath, at £20. Sir Kenneth will be discussing his book with Brian Taylor at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this morning at 10:30am