The germ of a novel arrives, I believe, in one moment of intense experience: when you catch an exchange of glances between a coloured girl and an old fiddler sitting opposite you in the Underground, when you hear from the dining-room of a back-street boarding house the lowing of a ship's siren. With me, the moment is generally lost even before the work begins. To the question, 'What gave you th...

Caudal regression syndrome (CRS) is characterized by a group of heterogeneous anomalies involving the distal spinal cord and vertebral column, genitourinary system, hind gut and limbs. The malformation may range from minor anomalies of spine and spinal cord to the extreme, the sirenomelia. Various authors pointed out an overlap of spectrum of anomalies in CRS and VACTERL (vertebral, anorectal, ...