Hugh Small, The Passion of Florence Nightingale, Amberley, 2010, paperback, 160pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781445600642

This revised edition of Hugh Small's controversial biography of Florence Nightingale published in 1998, which first revealed the constraints faced by Nightingale in seeking to highlight conditions in the military hospitals at Scutari during the Crimean War, is no less groundbreaking in its analysis of Nightingale's personal relationships and her extraordinary influence on politicians to shed further light on the hitherto elusive character of the lady with the lamp, who destroyed so much of her correspondence after the war.

It also draws on new research in assessing her leadership of the public health movement with its astonishing impact on the rise in life expectancy in Britain and challenges any lingering suggestion that a chronic infection caused her to suffer from depression. Unfortunately the references and bibliography from the original biography are not cited in this revised volume, where a fairly cryptic listing of additional source references is consigned to Appendix 2. However, Appendix 1 discusses briefly recent published literature at variance with some of the interpretations advanced by the author in this revised volume, which in many respects may be viewed as a post-script to the original volume.