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A Sunday Times top-five bestseller
‘This is a remarkable book . . . profound and deeply moving . . . It has as much to tell us about mental illness as it does about policing’ Alastair Stewart
John Sutherland joined the Met in 1992, having dreamed of being a police officer since his teens. Rising quickly through the ranks, he experienced all that is extraordinary about a life in blue: saving lives, finding the lost, comforting the broken and helping to take dangerous people off the streets. But for every case with a happy ending, there were others that ended in desperate sadness, and in 2013 John suffered a major breakdown.
Blue is his memoir of crime and calamity, of adventure and achievement, of friendship and failure, of serious illness and slow recovery. With searing honesty, it offers an immensely moving and personal insight into what it is to be a police officer in Britain today.
‘This is a remarkable book . . . profound and deeply moving . . . It has as much to tell us about mental illness as it does about policing’ Alastair Stewart
John Sutherland joined the Met in 1992, having dreamed of being a police officer since his teens. Rising quickly through the ranks, he experienced all that is extraordinary about a life in blue: saving lives, finding the lost, comforting the broken and helping to take dangerous people off the streets. But for every case with a happy ending, there were others that ended in desperate sadness, and in 2013 John suffered a major breakdown.
Blue is his memoir of crime and calamity, of adventure and achievement, of friendship and failure, of serious illness and slow recovery. With searing honesty, it offers an immensely moving and personal insight into what it is to be a police officer in Britain today.
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Reviews
John Sutherland lays out the human cost of working as a police officer in simple, devastating terms
A fascinating, powerful and beautifully written insight into the life of a police officer
A remarkable book: a magnum opus on belief and success, on depression and despair. It is well written and intellectually demanding, profound and deeply moving. In places, it is funny; everywhere, it is thoughtful. It has as much to tell us about mental illness as it does about policing. And there is much love in it: for friends, for family, for life
I read BLUE more or less in one sitting. I thought it was wonderful - very powerful, deeply moving and utterly honest
Admirably honest and movingly human . . . Sutherland asks us to look behind the faceless blue and see the individual people
A superb book
A gripping book . . . moving and really powerful . . . I highly recommend it
Courageous and moving
A stark account of a talented police officer's breakdown . . . This is a startlingly honest book and the final two chapters are heartbreaking
Will expand people's understanding of what it means to be a police officer in Britain today, revealing the truth about the toll that a career in policing can have on those tasked with the responsibility of tackling crime. This is a brave and compelling account of policing from a very senior officer in the most renowned police force in the world
An honest look at the vulnerability that comes with bravery
A remarkable, revealing and inspiring insight into the worlds of the police and the policed. The stories told are by turns heart-warming and saddening, moving and maddening - it is an account of the very best and the very worst of our society. It is a book which should be required reading for all who aspire to public office, in any sector and at every level
Brave and very honest
A remarkable, honest account of twenty years in policing
I commend it to the public. It's a great book
The effect of this honesty is to leave us both more appreciative of police officers and more concerned for their well-being, as well as encouraged that such a compassionate man was promoted so vertiginously. [Sutherland] describes police work as "fulfilling, humbling, inspiring, daunting, shattering, rewarding and soul-stirring" which is also a fair description of his book
This courageous and finely written book is a timely invitation to think more deeply about what we ask of our police