General Interest Publications

Richard Villar has written extensively for the general interest market. His articles have appeared in the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, the Evening Standard, British Medical Journal, Reader’s Digest, Cambridge Evening News and elsewhere. He has also written a number of books.

Knife Edge: Life as a Special Forces Surgeon.
ISBN-10: 0718142713
ISBN-13: 978-0718142711
Richard Villar, guest of the BBC's Hospital Watch, is a world-famous surgeon. He is also a hero. For much of his career Richard Villar has worked with the SAS, in the developing world, and amidst conflict zones that include Lebanon, Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Central America. Knife Edge is his extraordinary true story.

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Winged Scalpel
ISBN-10: 1781591687
ISBN-13: 978-1781591680
In this fast paced narrative, ex-SAS surgeon Richard Villar provides 'a very personal insight into the difficulties, dangers and occasional virtual impossibility of providing medical aid to disaster areas and war zones.He shares his remarkable experiences in the aftermath of three major earthquakes - Kashmir (2005), Java (2006) and Haiti (2010) - as well as in the Libyan civil war (2011).

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Never a Straight Line: Travels through Chile and Bolivia
ISBN-10: 095422034X
ISBN-13: 978-0954220341
After working in more than 40 countries and having served with the British SAS, Richard Villar knows a thing or two about the world. Join him as he tells the story of his 25-day journey from Arica in Chile’s north, through Bolivia, to Chile once more, and San Pedro de Atacama. He will have you laughing, he will have you thinking, he will have you wondering. Read how holding a horse’s testicles brings good luck, the danger of being attacked with burundanga, the delight of coca tea, chance encounters with aliens, and Richard’s futile attempts to hold a conversation with a hummingbird. If this book does not have you packing your bags for Chile and Bolivia, nothing will. Join Richard, master writer and master traveller, in his journey through this remoter part of Chile and Bolivia. Never A Straight Line is simply what Richard does.

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An Englishman Goes Walking: Through the Alps to the Sea
ISBN-10: 0954220323
ISBN-13: 978-0954220327
An Englishman Goes Walking is the story of Richard Villar, former SAS doctor, as he walks from Geneva to the Mediterranean Sea. This 700-kilometre Grande Traversée des Alpes is filled with adventure. Join Richard as he plods, laughs, and struggles across the mountains. He is attacked by homicidal hounds, crosses torrents and slippery snowfields, copes with 17 snorers, incinerates a refuge, and his hat is eaten by a cow. He even breaks his leg but keeps going. He meets escaping refugees, hears howling wolves and screeching marmots, spies golden eagles, survives the Storm of Storms, finds a village with a population of one, and encounters more than 80 others walking the same route. Will anyone succeed? There is Sabine from Germany, soon to be a Buddhist monk, and Bastien, the Frenchman addicted to cigarettes and coffee. Andrew who misses death by a whisker, the two grannies, the Silent Lady, the mountain guide in flip-flops, the Australians who have injured nearly everything, the Italian model who strips beside a lake, the barefoot walkers, the sozzled shepherd, the breast-fed baby, and the couples who always argue. This is Richard’s astonishing story. Frequently amusing, always interesting, it is a book to get you walking, even if you never reach the sea.

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