Alastair graduated in medicine from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1989. He completed his postgraduate clinical medical training at Guy’s Hospital, London before embarking on an early career in hospital medicine at The Royal London Hospital. He was elected to the Royal College of Physicians in 1995, although found the allure of psychiatry too hard to resist, and by 1996 had begun a new career as a trainee in psychiatry at The Maudsley Hospital. He was elected to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1998.   

 

During his training at the Maudsley Hospital, Alastair began to combine psychiatry with his continuing interest in medicine. He was appointed Consultant in Liaison Psychiatry in 2003, working as the senior psychiatrist for Guy’s Hospital, and in the Persistent Physical Symptoms unit at the Maudsley Hospital. Since 2021, he has worked as consultant neuropsychiatrist at the national neuropsychiatry service at The Maudsley Hospital.

 

Alastair has served as President of the Psychiatry Council at The Royal Society of Medicine, and as Vice Chair of Liaison Executive, Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has also acted as Psychiatric adviser to Jewish Association of Mentally Ill. He is an enthusiastic teacher and communicator, and is regularly invited as a speaker internationally as well as within the UK, and has had an official role in teaching medical students and junior doctors over many years.

 

In his spare time. he is a mediocre runner of half marathons, and an enthusiastic reader of all sorts of literature. His first book was published in 2021, and his second due for publication in 2025.