Should you be feeling poorly, there is a good doctor for you

Should you be feeling poorly and would like someone to read you a soothing poem, then I know a man perfectly qualified for the job. My husband, the doctor.

In fact, let me deploy capitals: The Doctor. Because on Friday the man formerly known as Himself – and previously the holder of a “mere” BA (English Literature) and a Masters (Journalism) – was awarded a PhD (Creative Writing).

Unfortunately, it’s not like a knighthood, so it does not mean I automatically get a title too. Still, I’m so proud. Newly armed with his PhD, my husband The Doctor is fully qualified to… um… Have they finished building those factories for arts graduates yet? Yeah, I hear the grumblings.

I know everyone is all about the STEM subjects with “proper” jobs at the end, the technology, the computers, the science, the maths. But this was hard graft. It took him three years, all the while working six or seven days a week, and occasionally stopping to feed himself, or the dogs, or for restorative wine.

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His thesis is 85 000 words long, while its addenda add another 30 000 words. That’s longer than a lot of novels. The bibliography alone is a novella. He’s written many novels too – three while doing the thesis – and short stories and essays, with around 35 books in total.

He’s a bestseller, and he’s made a lot of people feel better, like a good doctor should. After a lifetime as a writer, he could have got an honorary PhD, but he wanted to take the hard road. That’s the thing about arts graduates: they’re not above making their own lives difficult, at stretching themselves.

They’re inveterate experimenters. They are experts at finding a way, at making a plan, at creating the world anew, and ultimately at touching the human heart, and activating empathy. That’s why the arts are so important and should never be thought of as somehow less.

It’s there in so much of our lives, in music, film, books, television, the pictures on the wall, the chair you’re sitting in, and in all design – it’s even integral to whatever you’re currently reading this on, be it newspaper or device.

Sure, the arts don’t study matter, but they study meaning. They study why we matter, and that matters more than anything. Sonnet, anyone? Haiku?

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