This personal account covers the health of the British people between 1986 and 1988, politics, insights into the workings of the Whitehall machine and a look at the minds of mandarins and their ministers. Edwina Currie also reveals her thoughts on her period in office, during the challenges and crises on subjects from AIDS to breast cancer, from welfare to woolly hats, aiming to show what it was like to be a minister in the Thatcher government and how policy is really made. It will be of interest to anyone concerned about health - their own, that of their friends and family, and that of the nation - and to those who are intrigued by the phenomenon of Edwina Currie herself.