Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING Long before the pandemic, care work has been underpaid and its values disregarded. In this remarkable and compassionate book, Madeleine Bunting speaks to those on the front line of the care crisis, struggling to hold together a crumbling infrastructure. A combination of extraordinary first-hand accounts of caring with a history of care and its language, Labours of Love is an impassioned call for change at a time when we need it most. "Labours of Love is a masterpiece. Humane, perceptive, honest, compassionate, wide-ranging, and erudite, it is a profound inquiry into the most important social issue of our time: how we care for those who are not able to care for themselves. It could not be more timely. Though the political, social and individual challenges of caring have been growing over the last few decades, they have been ducked by successive governments and under-represented in the conversation we have with ourselves. The spectacle during the pandemic of people in care homes allowed to die through government indifference and the overwhelming pressures on formal and informal carers in the community have increased the urgency of a serious debate as to how we should meet the legitimate needs of carers and those for whom they care. This brilliant and disturbing book should set the terms for that debate. It should be read by policymakers, health and social care professionals, and anyone who has responsibility for delivering that is to say, pretty well all of us" —Raymond Tallis Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of many non-fiction books, including The Plot: A Biography of My Father's English Acre, which won the Portico Prize, and Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize and the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year. She has also written a novel, Island Song. She lives in London. Cover Title Page Contents Author’s Note Introduction 1: The Invisible Heart (i) care 2: Maintenance Art (ii) empathy 3: Listening to Vivaldi (iii) kindness 4: Care as Dark Matter (iv) compassion 5: Three Hundred Decisions a Day (v) pity 6: Bearing Witness (vi) dependence 7: The Ferryman’s Task (vii) suffering 8: Possible Futures Acknowledgements Notes Select Bibliography Index Also by Madeleine Bunting Copyright