Gavin Francis qualified in medicine from Edinburgh in 1999, after first studying Neuroscience, and is the author of ten books of non-fiction.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and works as a GP in Edinburgh and the Isles of Mull & Iona.

His books are True North: Travels in Arctic Europe (2008); Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins (2012) which was SMIT Scottish Book of the Year 2013 and shortlisted for the Costa, Ondaatje, Banff, & Saltire Prizes; Adventures in Human Being (2015), which won Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2015, was the Observer’s Science Book of the Year, and was a winner in the BMA Book Awards; Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change (2018), which was a book of the year in the Sunday Times and the Scotsman. Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession (2020) was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year; Intensive Care: a GP, a Community, & a Pandemic was published in January 2021 and was a notable book of the year in The Herald, Scotsman, Financial Times, Observer, Irish Times, and New Statesman. Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence (2022) was a Sunday Times bestseller. Sir Thomas Browne: the Opium of Time was published in spring 2023 by Oxford University Press.  Free For All – Why the NHS is Worth Saving is a passionate defence of the founding principles of the NHS, and an exploration of how and why it must be saved.  The Bridge Between Worlds – a brief history of connection explores the power of bridges, actual and metaphorical, to bring people together – across forty years of travel, six continents, and 2,000 years of engineering.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners. His work has been translated into twenty languages.