Alice Roberts on new Barts series: ‘I was in my element’
When Alice Roberts stepped inside St Bartholomew’s Hospital for the first time, she wasn’t prepared for how its history and modern medicine collide behind the grand 18th‑century façade. "My first time was making this series," she says. "It’s quite Tardis‑like. From the outside you don’t realise the scale of it at all."
Her new Channel 5 series, Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time, offered the perfect moment to explore Barts’ remarkable legacy from a fresh angle. “Barts recently celebrated its 900-year anniversary,” Roberts says. "It’s just astonishing to think that it’s been going for that long… still on the same site as the Norman hospital from the 1100s." What makes the series stand out, she adds, is the opportunity "to cover the contemporary hospital, modern treatments… and explore a lot of history that is Barts’ history."
For Roberts - once a medical doctor and now an anatomist and historian - the project brought together every part of her intellectual life. "I am a medic originally and fascinated with history, so I was in my element completely."
The hospital’s long list of pioneering figures includes Harold Gillies, the First World War surgeon whose reconstructive techniques transformed facial surgery. "He was extremely pioneering and brave," Roberts says. "What was extraordinary is that a lot of his techniques are still being used today."
Another highlight was handling a first edition of William Harvey’s groundbreaking text on circulation. "It was amazing… this incredible book on the motion of the heart and the blood in animals," she recalls. She even recreated his classic vein experiment: "You put a tourniquet on the arm… push the blood towards your hand then lift your finger and see which way the blood is flowing." The moment underscored how "doctors are all doing operations, treating patients, but they are also very interested in pushing the understanding of the body further."
That same curiosity carries through Barts Health today, where teams across all five hospitals balance everyday patient care with teaching and research.
Not all discoveries were as elegant. Re‑enacting a pre‑anaesthetic amputation in the Old Operating Theatre was "visceral and quite harrowing," she admits. "You are employing a whole team to hold the patient down… You’ve got to do it as quickly as possible for the sake of the patient."
The series also reveals how the work of the people behind the scenes at our trust, from laundry and cleaning teams to technicians and support staff, has evolved just as dramatically as the medical treatments themselves.
For Roberts, it is this interplay of past and present that makes Barts so compelling. "I have not seen a series like Barts before," she says. "I’m very proud of this series… and I hope we might go back because there are more stories to tell."
Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time will air on Channel 5 at 8pm on Wednesday 18 February, and then each of the following Wednesdays across six weeks.
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