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  • Rachel Cooke

Review of Time to Think by Hannah Barnes, Book of the Week winner by The Observer

What went wrong at the Tavistock Clinic's Gender Identity Development Service?

This investigation by BBC Newsnight reporter into the Tavistock Children's Gender Identity Clinic makes for disturbing reading.





Hannah Barnes's book on the rise and calamitous fall of the Gender Identity Development Service for Children (GIDS), a national-status unit of the UK National Health Service's Tavistock and Portman Foundation in North London, is the result of intensive work over several years.

A journalist with BBC Newsnight, Ms. Barnes based her account on over 100 hours of interviews with GIDS clinicians, former patients and other specialists, many of whom are quoted by name. Accompanied by 59 pages of notes and numerous carefully verified statistics, this study is scrupulous and fair. Many of the people interviewed for this book are satisfied with the treatment they received at the GIDS or with its practices - and the author lets them express themselves freely.


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