Book of the Year: A fortunate man.

If I had to nominate a book of the year it would be a fascinating, and frequently exciting, autobiography of a remarkable surgeon. It is hard to imagine that the BMJ has ever reviewed a comparable book, and I am privileged to have been entrusted with the formidable task. However inadequate the result, its deficiency will not be due to lack of admiration of the many varied and great contributions Sir Geoffrey Keynes has made, both directly and indirectly, during his long and most distinguished professional life, nor of the clarity with which his story has been told. The failure will be mine. The choice of title from William Blake's The Four Zoas, "Unbar the Gates of Memory: look upon me Not as another, but thy real Self. I am thy Spectre,"