I was not asked to write this review; I asked to be allowed to. I ordered my copy immediately after reading Mary Midgley's review1 in the Guardian and waited impatiently for it to arrive. When it did, I read it in every spare moment I had, and a lot I hadn't, ending up with underlinings and sometimes manic exclamation marks pencilled onto almost every page: 462 in all, not including another 123 of small-print notes and references. And that ‘pencilled’ (it dawned on me as I read) is important: pencil is inherently provisional, so it helps to keep the experience of the book alive. In other words, it makes at least an attempt to stop the excitement of first reading being grabbed and ossified by my left hemisphere.
Iain McGilchrist's qualifications for his massive undertaking are ideal, perhaps unique. A practising psychiatrist, once consultant and clinical director at the Maudsley Hospital, experimental neurophysiologist at the Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, ex-lecturer in English at Oxford University, Fellow of All Souls' on no fewer than three occasions, he is indeed the ‘Renaissance man’ so fitting to his theme. He begins by describing the range of techniques available to study the functioning of the brain, the way different areas ‘light up’ with different activities, and the way these areas are connected. Nor does he duck the limitations of these techniques. He notes therefore, among numerous surprising discoveries, that …