Richard Gordon (author)

Richard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and their film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.

Gordon has worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989,  Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.

The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Although they are still often reprinted, this popularity has not endured. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.

The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.

Partial bibliography

 * Doctor in the House. London: Joseph. 1952.
 * Doctor at Sea. London: Joseph. 1953.
 * Doctor at Large. London: Joseph. 1955.
 * Doctor in Clover. London: Joseph. 1960.
 * Doctor on Toast. London: Joseph. 1961.
 * Doctor in the House. Penguin. 1961.
 * Doctor on the Boil. Heinemann. 1970.
 * Doctor on the Brain. Heinemann. 1972.
 * Doctor in the Nude. Heinemann. 1973.
 * The Sleep of Life. Heinemann. 1975.
 * Doctor on the Job. Heinemann. 1976.
 * Doctor in the Nest. Heinemann. 1979.
 * Doctor's Daughters. Heinemann. 1981.
 * Doctor on the Ball. 1985.
 * Doctor in the Soup. 1986.


 * The Bulldon and the Bear. [play] . 1984.


 * Dr. Gordon's Casebook (diary)
 * The Alarming History of Medicine : Amusing Anecdotes from Hippocrates to Heart Transplants
 * An Alarming History of Famous and Difficult Patients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR
 * The Private Life of Doctor Crippen
 * The Private Life of Florence Nightingale
 * Great Medical Mysteries
 * Great Medical Discoveries
 * Great Medical Disasters, 2001
 * The Literary Companion to Medicine (editor), 1996