A KINGSTON GP whose first post was at Kingston Hospital has written his memoirs.

The Surgeon's Rhyme by Dr Michael Barrie is a hard hitting account of what it is really like to be a general practitioner facing medical dilemmas. uncovering misdiagnoses, breaking bad news and coping with an ever increasing workload.

Dr Barrie, the son of a paediatrician, recalls his days as a medical student at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, his first post at Kingston where he says he learned the irrelevance of just about everything he had leant at medical school.

He writes: "I studied anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, microbiology, histopathology but it seemed I might as well have done a degree in ancient history.

"Sure there were ill patients on the ward and a bit of medical knowledge did not go amiss, but most of the time I was a clerk. I seemed to be forever ordering investigations - urine tests, blood tests, X rays or whatever. I realise now that the first year of medical practice doesn't involve an awful lot of medicine but at the time I was gob-smacked."

Dr Barrie also worked at West Park Hospital, Epsom, and then decided to go into general practice and still works as a GP in Kingston.

The book's title The Surgeon's Rhyme is a reference to a diognostic rhyme from a senior and formidable surgeon at St Thomas's hospital. It went: "Heredity, sex and age Occupation, race and clime The ills that men are subject to - The vices of our time."

Dr Barrie has contributed more than 60 articles to medical journals including The Lancet.

The Surgeon's Rhyme is £8.99 and is published by The Book Guild.

A book of photographic memories about Kingston by Patrick Loobey has just been published in the Francis Frith's Photographic Memories series by The Frith Book Company.

The book shows old photographs of the town centre, the River Thames, Surbiton, Hampton Wick and Hampton Court and round and about the borough.