And Finally: Matters of Life and Death review – humility lessons from Henry Marsh

The ever candid neurosurgeon reflects on his own mortality, as well as the failings of his profession, in this enthralling third volume of memoirs

“I am not a scientist,” says Henry Marsh on the first page of And Finally. “Most neurosurgeons are not neuroscientists – to claim that they all are would be like saying that all plumbers are metallurgists.”

Marsh, who worked as a highly regarded neurosurgeon for more than 40 years, has a penchant for truth-telling, unencumbered by faux modesty. It’s what made his previous books – Do No Harm and Admissions– interrogating a life in medicine, haunted by the “reproachful ghosts” of patients he’d failed, so refreshing and inspiring to read.