Jun 29, 2026 · 32 min · 16 segments
From the team behind Project Mind Control comes a new series, The Surgeon of St Helena. Join journalist Luke Jones as he investigates the arrival of a rogue surgeon on one of the world's most remote…
[birds chirping] I'm Bernard McCabe.
I'm Sandra McCabe, his wife.
Retired many years ago from that, and, um, [laughs] now living in Essex.
It was in November 2021 until about March 2022.
I was aware that a former colleague of mine from the Met had taken a career break and had gone out there to work as a police officer.
This is increasingly my journalistic niche, English coppers getting calls out of the blue about far-flung islands in need of some investigative heft.
So I knew he was out there, but I'd had no contact with him for the period that he'd been out there to start with.
And then he made contact with me in October of 2021 out of the blue, just a phone call out of the blue saying, "Oh, how are you? How's things going? What are you up to?" I said, "Yeah, just ticking along." Uh, and he said, "Oh, I know this sounds strange.
Can I run something by you?" So he said that, that there'd been, um, this investigation, as it were, had come to light from the general hospital, Jamestown Hospital.
I was aware of it only because that's where, to my knowledge, they'd sent Napoleon in exile, and he died there.
Uh, and that was the extent of it.
Geographically, I wouldn't have had no idea where it was at all, and so that was the sum total of my knowledge.
Get yourself a map, find the South Atlantic, and pop your finger right in the middle.
It is twice the size of Manhattan Island in New York City, but with a population of around just 4,000, so you could pop them all in London's Royal Albert Hall and still have about 1,200 seats going spare.
As you actually come into land, it's a bit like a lunar landscape.
[birds chirping] I'm Bernard McCabe.
I'm Sandra McCabe, his wife.
Retired many years ago from that, and, um, [laughs] now living in Essex.
It was in November 2021 until about March 2022.
I was aware that a former colleague of mine from the Met had taken a career break and had gone out there to work as a police officer.
This is increasingly my journalistic niche, English coppers getting calls out of the blue about far-flung islands in need of some investigative heft.
So I knew he was out there, but I'd had no contact with him for the period that he'd been out there to start with.
And then he made contact with me in October of 2021 out of the blue, just a phone call out of the blue saying, "Oh, how are you? How's things going? What are you up to?" I said, "Yeah, just ticking along." Uh, and he said, "Oh, I know this sounds strange.
Can I run something by you?" So he said that, that there'd been, um, this investigation, as it were, had come to light from the general hospital, Jamestown Hospital.
I was aware of it only because that's where, to my knowledge, they'd sent Napoleon in exile, and he died there.
Uh, and that was the extent of it.
Geographically, I wouldn't have had no idea where it was at all, and so that was the sum total of my knowledge.
Get yourself a map, find the South Atlantic, and pop your finger right in the middle.
It is twice the size of Manhattan Island in New York City, but with a population of around just 4,000, so you could pop them all in London's Royal Albert Hall and still have about 1,200 seats going spare.
As you actually come into land, it's a bit like a lunar landscape.
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