Hugh Small

Hugh Small graduated in physics and psychology from Durham University and is a former partner in a prestigious US management consultancy where he was taught to ‘catch people doing things right’. For the last fifteen years he has worked as a revisionist social historian investigating altruism in history.

His first book exposed Florence Nightingale's deliberate destruction of her own exaggerated reputation after the Crimean War by leaking secret information that showed her Scutari hospital in a terrible light. She wanted this information to be known to the most influential people as a part of her plan for saving millions of lives in Britain and around the world through public expenditure on sanitation.

His second book revealed the altruistic motives behind the Charge of the Light Brigade, which had previously been seen only as a blunder by incompetent senior officers. His latest book, Giving Away the Planet: the Psychology of Environmental Destruction shows another side of altruism. Small demonstrates that far from being caused by greed, our obsessive search for endless economic growth is caused by innate but misdirected self-sacrifice. He bases his thesis on the latest research in biology, archaeology, anthropology and psychology which over the last 15 years has revised every previous idea of human nature.

Hugh Small is not a committed altruist himself although his career and upbringing may account for his interest in the subject. He was raised by a coterie of spinster nurses while living with his single father, a Harley Street surgeon.  His father was a confirmed socialist who performed major surgery on royalty inside Buckingham Palace but spent most of his time operating on poor children in Britain's National Health Service. The most influential of the future author’s female carers were the senior nursing staff at an East End hospital including the matron who was his hands-on godmother. These nurses had shown great heroism when this was the first hospital to be bombed during WWII. Small had the run of the hospital wards and senior staff quarters, where patients and nurses shamelessly fawned on him showing complete disregard for the development of his character. His first trip abroad, at age 12 in 1955, was to the Continent alone with one of the nursing sisters to tour the war cemeteries and battlefields and to listen to her horrific tales of the Blitz in their gloomy pension. He later married a nurse and was widowed in 2005. He has two altruistic daughters and lives in Central London.

Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End, 1954 by Hugh Small The hospital was demolished some years ago, though the entrance archway still stands near the site, see Lost Hospitals of London (my thanks to the webmaster for helping my research) (Right) War Heroes: Sister Dorothy Inman, Matron Fan Davies (my godmother), unrecorded alpha male, and Sister Stella Brand in off-duty clothes. I took this photo in 1954. I really only wanted a picture of my Auntie Inman, Auntie Fan, and Auntie Brand (surnames only for junior officers).   I asked Auntie Brand to take a picture of me with Auntie Fan and Auntie Inman but she was not that good with a camera and only got about a quarter of poor Fan. Auntie Brand took me on my first trip abroad the following year. We stayed in a hotel in Bruges and went on coach trips to the Netherlands and France to see the battlefields and the war cemeteries. Over supper she would hold me spellbound with bloodcurdling stories of the hospital during the Blitz. She would also reduce herself to helpless giggles telling me anecdotes of the annual visits of Queen Mary and confided to me that all the nurses were in love with my father. I let her use my government-surplus camera and she left me with a number of photographs of odd parts of my anatomy in front of wonky war memorials.       I found a photo of Auntie Fan in the Nursing Mirror of 20 December 1947, receiving a gift of a cigarette box from royalty. In those days everyone smoked. In my book about Florence Nightingale I mentioned that my father worked with a surgeon in Auntie Fan's hospital who regularly smoked a cigarette while he was operating.  'Lord Lisle' is a misprint for Lord Lyle, the sugar magnate whose Tate & Lyle sugar factory was nearby.     I took this photo of my father in the hospital car park with his 3-litre Alvis Healey (registration OXW 685 in case anyone should know where it is now). This car had no seat belts of course and there was no speed limit. He once took me up to 115 mph in it on an ordinary 2-lane road in Surrey.  Get your hanky out !