London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Peaceful, orderly, and sometimes stoical waiting is a quintessentially British phenomenon. It has been a feature of the NHS since its first day. Yet there have been times when the subliminal trade-off of free treatment in return for rationing by waiting has surfaced as individual and political crises: visible in encounters between doctors and patients, and between NHS authorities and politicians. The history of waiting illuminates key shifts in NHS governance and accountability.