From Louis XIV to the Shah of Iran: celebrities under the surgeon’s knife
Powerful memoirs by such eloquent doctors as Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Gabriel Weston and Paul Kalanithi have whipped…
Stage fright
Patrick McGrath is a master of novels about post-traumatic fragmentation and dissolution, set amid gothic gloom. His childhood years spent…
A Feelgood fairy story
When I wrote for the NME as a schoolgirl in the 1980s, it was recognised that there were musicians who…
When two young Britons go camping in Yosemite their lives are changed for ever
The title of A.D. Miller’s follow-up to his Man Booker shortlisted debut Snowdrops refers not to lovers but to two…
