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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Robert Powell

Henry Marsh

Jill Waters

Book of the Week: Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery: Episode 4

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery, Episode 4

The surgeon's dilemma - anxiety is contagious, but confidence is also contagious.

Operating on a human brain poses great risks and requires confidence and decisiveness. But sometimes mistakes are made - and not always in the operating theatre.

Operating on a human brain poses great risks, and requires confidence and decisiveness. But sometimes mistakes are made - and not always in the operating theatre.

Henry Marsh read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University before studying medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London, graduating in 1979. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1984 and was appointed Consultant Neurosurgeon at Atkinson Morley's/St.George's in 1987, he retired from there in 2015 and has since continued to operate in Ukraine and Nepal as well as teaching in hospitals around the world.

His first memoir, Do No Harm, was a bestseller when it was published in 2014 - Admissions is the more personal and provocative follow up, reflecting on a life in surgery.

Henry Marsh has been the subject of two major documentary films - Your Life in their Hands (2003) which won the Royal Television Society Gold Medal and The English Surgeon (2009) which won an Emmy. He has lectured widely on the subject of hospital architecture and design, keeps bees and makes furniture in his spare time. He was made a CBE in 2010 and is married to the best-selling anthropologist and writer Kate Fox.


Written by Henry Marsh
Read by Robert Powell
Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

By Henry Marsh. Reflections on a life spent operating at the frontline of neurosurgery.

By Henry Marsh. Reflections on a life spent operating at the frontline of neurosurgery at home and abroad. Read by Robert Powell. Abridged by Jill Waters.

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