‘As you read this, more than a hundred thousand ambulance medics across the planet are responding to emergencies. They are scrambling under crashed cars, carrying the sick down flights of stairs, resuscitating near-dead husbands at the feet of hysterical wives, and stemming the blood-flow of gunshot victims in seedy back alleys. A good number too are just as likely to be raising an eyebrow at some ridiculous, trivial complaint their patient has considered life threatening enough to call them for.’

Paramedico is a heart-stopping, white-knuckle ride about a paramedic at work in an ambulance, attending emergencies in far-flung places such as England, Iceland, Macedonia, Mexico, Pakistan, The Philippines, South Africa and Thailand – at the time of the 2004 tsunami. This is also a brilliantly written collection of wild tales of wild people whose lives are so different from our own that it’s hard to believe they really exist. Gilmour is able to make us stop and think not only of how to live a life, but how precious life is and how important it is to protect it.