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Henry Marsh has spent four decades operating on the human brain. In this searing and provocative memoir, following his retirement from the NHS, he reflects on the experiences that have shaped his career and life, gaining a deeper understanding of what matters to us all in the end.
The often hilarious, at times horrifying and occasionally heartbreaking diaries of a former junior doctor, and the story of why he decided to hang up his stethoscope.
‘I was born in Washington, DC, June 13, 1931, of parents who immigrated from Russia shortly after the First World War. Home was the inner city of Washington – a small apartment atop my parents’ grocery store on First and Seaton Street. During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor, black neighbourhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge and, twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies’. Irvin Yalom is a gifted and lyrical writer whose memoir traces his life, from the apartment above his parents’ grocery store to a world stage via the intimacy of his consulting room. The memoir includes his self-analysis and is interwoven with vignettes from patients whose stories have played such a central role in his life.
The often hilarious, at times horrifying and occasionally heartbreaking diaries of a former junior doctor, and the story of why he decided to hang up his stethoscope.
‘Your Life in My Hands’ is at once a powerful polemic on the systematic degradation of Britain’s most vital public institution, and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service and those who support it.
Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Prompted by his retirement from his full-time job in the NHS, and through his continuing work in Nepal and Ukraine, Henry has been forced to reflect more deeply about what 40 years spent handling the human brain has taught him. Moving between encounters with patients in his London hospital, to those he treats in the more extreme circumstances of his work abroad, Henry faces up to the overwhelming burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering.
Gary Fildes is not your average astronomer. After leaving school at 17 he went to work on a building site, where he stayed for a quarter of a century. Then one day, middle age approaching alarmingly, he acted on his life-long passion. The stars. Today Gary is the founder and lead astronomer of Kielder public observatory, a state-of-the-art visitor attraction that is amongst the best in the world. In this inspiring and accessible book, Gary shares his life’s enthusiasm for the night sky.
Expecting takes the reader on a physical, emotional, philosophical and artistic odyssey through pregnancy. A memoir exploring each of the nine months of Chitra’s pregnancy, Expecting is a book of intimate, strange, wild and lyrical essays that pay tribute to this most extraordinary and ordinary of experiences.
In ‘An Appetite for Wonder’ Richard Dawkins brought us his engaging memoir of the first 35 years of his life. In ‘Brief Candle in the Dark’ he continues his autobiography, following the threads that have run through the second half of his life so far and homing in on the key individuals, institutions and ideas that inspired and motivated him. He paints a vivid picture, coloured with wit, anecdote and digression, of the twenty-five postgraduate years he spent teaching at Oxford. He pays affectionate tribute to past colleagues and students, recalling with characteristic wry humour the idiosyncrasies of an establishment steeped in ancient tradition and arcane ritual while also recording his respect for the profound commitment to learning and discovery that lies at its core.
An impassioned, tender and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
What is it really like to be a brain surgeon, to hold someone’s life in your hands, to drill down into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong? In this powerful, gripping and brutally honest account, one of the country’s top neurosurgeons reveals what it is to play god in the face of the life-and-death situations he encounters daily. Henry Marsh gives a rare insight into the intense drama of the operating theatre, the chaos and confusion of a modern hospital, the exquisite complexity of the human brain, and the blunt instrument that is surgeon’s knife by comparison.
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