PERSPECTIVE. HENRY MARSH MD. And Finally: Matters of Life and Death

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.

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 Henry 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.

‘Magnificent’ Rachel Clarke, author of Breath-taking

‘Given its subject – broadly, death and disease – the book is unexpectedly fun, and the author pretty much irresistibly likable’ Guardian

‘Facing his own mortality, Marsh has written a vividly wry and honest book’ The Times

‘Marsh shares his journey with a dark yet whimsical humour, and ponders too the eternal mysteries of time’ Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 2022

LEARN MORE

• THE GUARDIAN. How brain surgeon Henry Marsh went from doctor to patient: ‘I blurted out the question we all ask – how long have I got?’
• WASHINGTON POST. What one doctor learns when he becomes a patient 
• HENRY MARSH Bestselling Author & Leading British Neurosurgeon