Robert Lindsay, actor- TB as a child

The taboo of silence that used to surround TB crops up in unexpected quarters.

On today’s BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Morning Live programme actor Robert Lindsay says he didn’t know until he was 42 that he had TB as a child.

It was a doctor who looked at his chest x-ray and told him there was a TB scar on his lung.

He asked his father who confirmed it (his mother was already dead.

He said: “It was a disease of the poor, something that was hidden away. My parents never talked about it.”

Yet as a 7 year old he remembers that he spent three months in a sanatorium.

As an actor he “ dumped his background” along with his Derbyshire accent.

But loosing a chunk of his childhood did have consequences. It made him isolated; he likes being on his own.

Well, all those of us who went through the “sanatorium experience” know exactly how he feels.

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