And Finally: Matters Of Life And Death Henry Marsh Cape €17.50....

Ithink we can call of f the search for the World's Most Calmly Imperturbable Man. The winner is the patient on whom Henry Marsh once performed a bungled operation to release a trapped nerve. The next day, Marsh approached the bed and told the man, 'I'm afraid I have some rather bad news - I've operated on the wrong side of your neck.' After a thoughtful silence, the patient replied, 'Mr Marsh, I put in fitted kitchens for a living. I once put one in back to front. It's easily done. Just promise me you'll do the right side as soon as possible…' Marsh, right, is the English neurosurgeon whose bestselling 2014 memoir Do No Harm: Stories Of Life, Death And Brain Surgery described, bluntly and breezily, how it feels to drill or saw into a human skull and forage in the spongy brain for some microscopic intruder that threatens a patient's life. He also told shocking tales of NHS mismanagement - and of his own ineptitude that sometimes left his patients at least half-dead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]