May 12, 2022 Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month: Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell & After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth Reviewed by Rebecca Foster May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and so the perfect time to consider two memoirs of postnatal depression, one…
April 12, 2022 Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology by A. J. Lees Reviewed by Annabel Dr Andrew Lees is a neurology professor at the National Hospital in London the first English hospital dedicated exclusively to treating…
March 3, 2022 The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein by Sharon Ruston Review by Annabel Gaskell Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, her novel conceived during that momentous trip to Geneva in 1816 during ‘the year without a summer’,…
February 8, 2022 Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief in a Time of Pandemic, by Roopa Farooki Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of Covid-19 chronicles. My favourites of the twenty-some I’ve read…
December 7, 2021 Everybody: A Book About Freedom by olivia laing Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Olivia Laing has established herself as a group biographer par excellence, taking as her subjects alcoholic writers for the superb…
September 30, 2021 The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye By Liz Dexter This book is primarily concerned with explaining how society, as it is currently arranged, often makes trans people’s lives unnecessarily difficult….
August 19, 2021 The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, edited by Owen Davies Reviewed by Harriet If there’s one thing that this impressively learned and wide-ranging volume amply demonstrates, it’s that an interest in magic and witchcraft…
June 24, 2021 Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, by Mark Solms Review by Terence Jagger This is a fascinating book, one I bought after hearing the author give an inspiring presentation to the Royal Institution….
April 13, 2021 Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker Reviewed by Lory Widmer-Hess Schizophrenic. The very word is a trigger for aversion, a signal to run away, with its spiky, spluttered consonants and…
April 8, 2021 Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period…
October 13, 2020 Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector Reviewed by Annabel Kings College Hospital-based Professor Tim Spector’s name is, I hope, becoming more widely known in the UK since the pandemic began….
August 27, 2020 The Changing Mind by Daniel Levitin Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a wonderful book, and the real title is the sub-title: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well. It is…
July 2, 2020 Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara…
June 11, 2020 Wayfinding by Michael Bond Review by Terence Jagger I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have always been fairly confident in my abilities as a navigator (though with…
April 23, 2020 ‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #2 – Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature…
April 23, 2020 ‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #1 – Vagina A Re-Education by Lynn Enright The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature…
April 16, 2020 Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Back in early March, just before literary events started being cancelled due to coronavirus, I had the good fortune to…
November 7, 2019 Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff Review by Peter Reason This is a book about the philosophical perspective of panpsychism, written by a leading academic advocate. Panpsychism is an awkward…
September 5, 2019 The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman Review by Simon. The number of science books I’ve read can be numbered on my fingers, and number of science books I’ve read that weren’t written…
July 30, 2019 This Really Isn’t About You by Jean Hannah Edelstein Review by Max Dunbar There’s a common British anecdote that goes: ‘We had some American friends here on holiday, and on the third day…
April 9, 2019 The Art of Life Admin: How to do Less, do it Better, and Live More, by Elizabeth Emens Review by Liz Dexter Emens is a professor of Law who made the discovery a while back that there was something invisible and other…
March 26, 2019 War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by David Nott Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Looking out from my inconsequential life, I’m often envious of people who save lives on a regular basis – doctors,…
February 19, 2019 With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix Reviewed by Annabel Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018 this book, which is full of wisdom and compassion, was one of the…
February 14, 2019 I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux Review by Max Dunbar Alpha males in print tend to be omega males in real life. Friedrich Nietzsche was not rich during his lifetime….
November 27, 2018 Nine Pints: A Journey through the Mysterious, Miraculous World of Blood by Rose George Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Rose George is the author of three previous wide-ranging nonfiction books, about refugees, human waste and foreign shipping. In Nine…
