Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Thomas Marsh

Orion Books, 2014, £8.99 Pb 278pp, ISBN 9781780225920
Reviewed by B Anthony Bell, emeritus professor of neurosurgery

Most of the 25 chapters are dramatised case reports of patients treated in a south west London's neurosurgical unit. If you have no neurological background the clinical descriptions can be intriguing, less so for the neurologically trained, but the literary style makes entertaining reading and the book can be hard to put down.

If the book was about cakes, it has plenty of guidance on ingredients and culinary techniques to bake one, the only thing missing is the reason cakes are made. Marsh observes the central nervous system's exquisite complexity, the tragedy of disease and death, the fears and emotions of human existence, but never delves deeper to grasp the hope within us. Hugh Palmer used part of chapter one to illustrate his Easter sermon at All Souls Langham Place. Author Ian McEwan describes the book as 'Painfully honest... a superb achievement'. The Guardian reports 'Startling and moving... enthralling', the Spectator 'Excellent... hugely compelling', The Telegraph 'This is a book about wisdom and experience'. Should you read Do No Harm? Can you afford not to?

The Observer should perhaps have the last word 'Well thank God for Henry Marsh... One of the finest admissions to emerge in this phenomenal book is that of every surgeon's dilemma, which is the inability to play God'.