I started school in northern Scotland, and left with a scholarship to study medical sciences and philosophy, at Corpus Christi College Cambridge. I later transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford to study clinical medicine, and while there rowed for Oxford University (Isis) in the 1981 Boat Race.

I continued medical studies in the United States, before returning to London and then Edinburgh to train in psychiatry, going on to work as a Consultant in Liaison Psychiatry in

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, mainly in the emergency department and acute admissions unit.

In 2014 I took up a new role in the UK's first Transplant Psychiatry post, working with the kidney, liver and pancreas transplant services in Edinburgh.

I have written or co-written many scientific papers, books, book chapters, and editorials in the fields of non-cardiac chest pain, transplant psychiatry, and euthanasia. I’ve contributed chapters to the Edinburgh textbooks of psychiatry and medicine, which have between them sold 200,000+ copies.

I've lectured at international meetings on the similarites and differences between creating fictional characters and the central skill  - for all doctors, but especially psychiatrists -  of taking a patient's history. 

I was awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2006 and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 2014.