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The Letters of Oliver Sacks (Observer)
Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr (Observer)
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell (Lancet)
The Golden Rule by Lucy Pollock (The Times)
On Medicine Shortages post-Brexit (London Review of Books)
On Clare Hammond’s ‘On the Shadow Tracks’ – a train to Myanmar’s Dark Heart (Observer)
Astronomer of the Mind – 50 years of Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings (Lancet)
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (The Lancet)
Collision Sports – on rugby, gladiators & concussion (London Review of Books)
Why the NHS is Worth Saving (Wellcome Trust)
Robert Blomfield – Student of Light (The Lancet)
FIVE BEST books on Healing (Wall Street Journal)
The Complexities of Recovery & Convalescence (TIME magazine)
Free For All – A Defence of the NHS (Guardian Long Read)
Mortality, destiny & possibility – Lorrie Moore’s new novel (The Lancet) File here
On Multiple Sclerosis (London Review of Books)
The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese (Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh)
The Dream of Forgetfulness – on dementia, amnesia & reconciliation (New York Review)
Britain’s NHS in dire straits (Economist / 1843), January 2023
Leonardo da Vinci & the beauty of anatomy (Observer)
GP: A Fortunate Profession? review A Fortunate Woman (Lancet) (pdf)
Tie Up Your Teenagers – on sociogenic illness (London Review of Books)
A review of Zero by Jeremy Hunt (New Statesman)
The Babel Within – On multilingualism (New York Review)
On Antibiotic Resistance (London Review of Books)
We need to rediscover the lost art of convalescence (Telegraph)
Intimate & Invasive – on the prostate & prostate cancer (New York Review)
The overlooked art of recovery (Guardian Long Read)
What I wish people knew about dementia, by Wendy Mitchell (Times)
Silicon Valley Sceptics (The New York Review of Books)
Mapping Our Common Future – 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years (The Lancet)
Pure, Liquid Hope’ – what Covid vaccines mean to me (Guardian Long Read)
The Head in the Shed – on Sue Black (London Review of Books)
The Armchair Island Traveller (Dec 2020 – Literature Alliance Scotland)
New Nature Writing from Scotland, with Kathleen Jamie, Jim Crumley, Chitra Ramaswamy & Roseanne Watt
(Island Dreams from 12 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8YsMC-HqAc
The paradox & the allure of island life (Observer Magazine)
The world’s most mesmerising islands (Telegraph)
Changing Psychiatry’s Mind (New York Review of Books)
‘Lockdown seen from General Practice’ (Guardian Long Read)
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See (Guardian Review)
May, 1, Edinburgh (Pandemic Journal – New York Review of Books)
We’re Clearing the Decks’ (Guardian Long Read)
Dear Life by Rachel Clarke (Guardian)
Why do we have capacity for wonder? NY Academy of Sciences, Feb 2020
Wonder & Awe in Science & Medicine, NY Academy of Sciences, Feb 2020
(with psychologist Tania Lombrozo & cosmologist Marcelo Gleiser)
The Paradox of Knowledge: NY Academy of Sciences
The Science and Art of Medicine (The Lancet) (pdf)
Loop, by Brenda Lozano (Guardian)
Best books of 2019 (New Statesman)
The Road Not Taken – My love affair with Geography (New Statesman)
What I’ve learned from suicidal patients (Guardian Long Read)
The Body – A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson (Guardian)
Homesick by Catrina Davies (Guardian)
Resistance to Immunity – on anti-Vaccination (New York Review of Books)
Sick-Note Britain by Adrian Massey (Times)
LOL – Studies of Laughter in Interaction (New York Review of Books)
The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell (Guardian Review)
BBC Radio 4 – The Art of Living (contributor) (short excerpt here)
National Poetry Day – collaboration with a Dalek:
The future of the NHS, at its 70th birthday (Guardian)
The Surprising Literary History of Skin Care (Paris Review)
Is medicine an art or a science? Hay Festival videos
Readings in human transformation (Guardian)
Too Many Pills by James Le Fanu (Times)
The Spanish Flu (London Review of Books)
The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard (Guardian)
On werewolves & other shapeshifters (London Review of Books)
On Oliver Sacks’s The River of Consciousness (Guardian)
In the Flower Garden of the Brain (New York Review)
Cerebral Hygiene – Sleep Medicine (London Review of Books)
Bluets, by Maggie Nelson (Guardian Review)
The Matter of the Heart (New Statesman)
Admissions by Henry Marsh (Guardian Review)
Storyhealing – Medicine & Literature (Aeon)
Irresistible – smartphones and Internet addiction (Observer New Review)
Crisis in the NHS (London Review of Books)
The Supplicant Women, David Greig / Aeschylus (New York Review)
TEDx University of Edinburgh:
A Smell of Burning by Colin Grant (Guardian)
In the Morgue (London Review of Books) (& podcast)
‘The Life Project’ by Helen Pearson (London Review of Books)
Medicine & Literature – ten personal favourites (Guardian)
5 Best: Books on Transformation (Wall Street Journal)
Finding ‘Right Compassion’ (International New York Times)
Art & Anatomy – Visual Dissection Exhibition (New York Review of Books)
Gender Variance: Medical & Cultural perspectives (New Republic)
Three Spoonfuls of Hemlock: Medieval Medicine (London Review of Books)
Profit, not Patients: the risks of private medicine (Guardian)
BBC Radio 4 – The Art of Living (contributor) (short excerpt here)
TEDx talk – Adventures in Human Being
On Immunity – An Inoculation (Guardian Review)
An Adventure in Human Being (Guardian Review)
Three pieces about Death (Guardian Review)
The Immeasurable World, by William Atkins (Guardian Review)
Cash for Diagnoses (London Review of Books)
A Fortunate Man – a masterpiece of witness (Guardian Review)
The World of the Deaf (New York Review of Books)
The Supplicant Women, David Greig / Aeschylus (New York Review)
‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande (Guardian Review)
The Story of Pain (London Review of Books)
‘How To Make A Human Being’ (Guardian Review)
Do No Harm’ by Henry Marsh (Guardian Review)
Listening to the Heart (London Review of Books)
‘The Novel Cure’ (Guardian Review)
Annie Dillard: The Abundance (Guardian)
In Praise of Libraries (Scotsman)
‘Don’t Try This At Home’ (London Review of Books)
‘The Heretics’ (Guardian Review)
AMONG THE NEURONS (London Review of Books)
The art of Yves Berger (New York Review of Books)
The Christmas Truce (New York Review of Books)
At the Talbot Rice Gallery (New York Review of Books)
On Libraries (National Library of Scotland)
The Edge of Europe (Island Review)
The View from Antarctica (Guardian)
Captain Scott & Dr Wilson (Caught by the River)