I, Vera with Miranda Seymour

Join Miranda Seymour in conversation with Dr Chrissie Van Mierlo as she uncovers the riveting story of Vera Gedroits, a true medical heroine, a princess, and the world’s first female battlefield surgeon, whose tremendous contribution to medicine has remained unacknowledged to this day.

Vera Gedroits was a towering, sweet-faced lesbian princess, an ardent supporter of workers’ rights who regularly performed true medical miracles of surgery. On one occasion, she even frogmarched an inquisitive Rasputin out of a ward for wounded officers.

While working for César Roux at the world’s best known medical institute in Lausanne, Vera became the world’s first woman surgeon. Off the back of this, she was appointed by the doomed Tsarina to teach the women of the Romanov family how to be nurses.

Miranda will shed light on the riveting story of a daring and brilliant woman who chose to make Ukraine her homeland, someone adored by her friends and patients and whose achievements as an administrator and bold reformer invite comparisons to Florence Nightingale.

How refreshing that Miranda Seymour should choose an absolute unknown to write about, whose life was genuinely interesting and surprising … she has uncovered a particularly entrancing story to beguile us with - Spectator

Featuring - Miranda Seymour