And Finally

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

As a neurosurgeon, I lived in a world filled with fear and suffering, death and cancer. But rarely, if ever, did I think about what it would be like if what I witnessed at work every day happened to me. This book is the story of how I became a patient myself.

As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age. But he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and the brain, the beauty of the natural world and his love for his family. Elegiac, candid, luminous and poignant, And Finally is ultimately not so much a book about death, but a book about life and what matters in the end.


© Henry Marsh 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Henry Marsh may have retired from medicine but let’s hope he keeps producing books as good as this one, which enthral as well as teach.

    Observer

  • [And Finally] is unexpectedly fun, and the author is pretty much irresistibly likeable… diagnoses and remissions are described with wonderful candour… [and Marsh’s] discussion of end-of-life care and assisted dying is the best essay I have read on the subject.

    Guardian

  • [Marsh is] deeply reflective, the result is a bit like sitting in the pub with the smartest person you know.

    Spectator

  • Beautifully written… A thoughtful journey into his experience as a doctor-turned-patient, enlivened with a wonderful black humour and a gimlet eye for comforting nonsense… One couldn’t wish for a better guide.

    Daily Telegraph, 5 stars

  • His dignified introspection is a joy.

    Clare Chambers, author of SMALL PLEASURES

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