Book review: Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care by Madeleine Bunting

Journalist and broadcaster Madeleine Bunting spent five years researching what she calls a 'quiet crisis buried in individual lives' (p.5). The book's page proofs arrived with the author just after the UK had gone into lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having written a book to shed light on work which is misunderstood, and marginalised, overnight care-work was featuring daily in news bulletins, and carers were being cheered and clapped from the doorsteps. Bunting's timing was perfect, but a book which examines 'the UK's precarious and overstretched health and social care systems' (p. vii) is long overdue.