In 2020, the NHS faces an unprecedented challenge as coronavirus sweeps the globe.

The crisis has exposed both the strengths and the weaknesses of one of our most cherished institutions as it mobilises to treat the sick and prevent the spread of the disease.

Thousands of retired doctors and nurses have returned to the front line to join an extraordinary national effort to save tens of thousands of lives.

Yet the emergency comes at a time when the NHS is under huge strain, draining resources from an already creaking system. Fundamental questions about its state - and its future - remain. How good really is the NHS and can it cope with the formidable challenges it faces, even without the terrifying new threat of global pandemics?

Every day, millions of patients receive care that is fair, good or outstanding and they are grateful. In keeping with Nye Bevan’s founding principles, the same treatment is available to rich and poor, and is free at the point of need. Public support for the concept remains overwhelming. Yet for every positive NHS experience there are negatives: care that is substandard, disjointed and arrives too late; patients dying while on waiting lists and suffering because they cannot get the treatment they need. A cult of secrecy surrounds errors and failings. Politicians on all sides dissemble and lie. This book seeks to strip away the spin and uncover the true state of the NHS: the good, the bad and the ugly. It explores an increasingly urgent question: can the NHS go on like this?