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The Royal Free

About the Book

The Royal Free

An exuberant dark comedy about dying young, parenting through grief, and the full-on hilarity of copyediting a medical journal while the city around you burns.

James Ballard is a recently widowed father to a baby daughter. And he is a copy editor tasked with saving the Royal London Journal of Medicine from the mistakes no one else notices --- misplaced apostrophes, Freudian misspellings, the wrong influenza strain. This job is utterly boring but --- he tells himself --- totally crucial. The Royal London is a stronghold of care for the human body and a bastion of humanism in a disintegrating world. In London, outside the office, the prognosis for the body politic is grim: there are riots in the streets. While attempting to balance a six-month-old baby, his grief, and his work with a cast of mad and lovably eccentric medical editors, he finds himself the target of a violent gang of North London teenagers. 

Equal parts workplace comedy, home invasion thriller, and literary conundrum, THE ROYAL FREE is vastly entertaining while also offering a lament for the unbearable, nearly unspeakable nature of a death that comes too soon.

The Royal Free
by Carl Shuker

  • Publication Date: June 17, 2025
  • Genres: Fiction, Humor
  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Counterpoint
  • ISBN-10: 1640097058
  • ISBN-13: 9781640097056