Life & Times Books

The Uninhabitable Earth. A Story of the ‘Cascades’, and emphasises the scale, speed, ‘I believe in engagement [his emphasis] Future and self-reinforcing properties of the climate above all, engagement wherever it may David Wallace-Wells chaos that has already begun to engulf us. help. In fact, I find any other response to the Allen Lane, 2019, HB, 320pp, £20.00, 978- Among its more arresting facts is this: we climate crisis morally incomprehensible.’ 0241355213 have produced more atmospheric carbon in the 30 years since Al Gore’s first book on Sir David Attenborough, the inspirational climate than in all the millennia preceding it. Swedish student Greta Thunberg, and the The second part of the book, ‘Elements innovative activists of Extinction Rebellion of Chaos’, is a whistlestop tour through have shown us that engagement is possible the tunnel of horrors that climate change and essential. Writing this review has creates — drought, famine, flooding, increased my own engagement, and reading dying oceans, unbreathable air, disease it might do the same for you. We owe it to epidemics, economic collapse, enforced our children and grandchildren — and to all migration, and armed conflict. Towards the the generations who follow them. Whether end of this section we read: their planet remains hospitable to any kind of humane civilisation is largely down to us. ‘If you have made it this far, you are a brave CLIMATE CHAOS: COMPLACENCY OR reader. Any one of these twelve chapters Dougal Jeffries, ENGAGEMENT? contains, by rights, enough horror to induce Retired GP, Falmouth. Nearly half a century ago my undergraduate a panic attack in even the most optimistic.’ Email: [email protected] degree included a module entitled ‘Human Ecology’. Our reading included Paul Quite so. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp19X704453 Ehrlich’s seminal Population, Resources, Yet you should read on, for the third Environment; the Club of Rome’s report section, ‘The Climate Kaleidoscope’, is the * * * * * most important, going beyond the catalogue The Limits to Growth; and Barbara Ward Machines Like Me of disaster into a discussion of our cultural and Rene Dubos’s Only One Earth: the Care Ian McEwan and Maintenance of a Small Planet. assumptions, the power of ideologies Jonathan Cape, 2019, HB, 320pp, £18.99, We learned about the greenhouse effect; (political and economic), ideas about history 978-1787331662 we knew that our civilisation and material and ‘progress’, and what kinds of ethics abundance were predicated on the profligate might emerge as the crisis unfolds. Will we and ever-increasing consumption of fossil find a historically unprecedented capacity for fuels; we knew that population growth and universal cooperation and empathy, or — as concomitant resource consumption could seems more likely — ‘by drawing our circles not continue indefinitely — and we assumed, of empathy smaller and smaller, or by simply naïvely, that this knowledge would soon turning a blind eye when convenient,[will we] become widespread, that solutions would find ways to engineer new indifference?’ be found, and that, possibly, the world The concluding chapter, ‘The Anthropic would reach a steady state of sustainable Principle’, reminds us — as did Barbara productivity and a fair distribution of goods. Ward in 1972 — that this is the one planet we How wrong we were. In the sudden, belated, have. The Voyager 1 space probe showed us: but welcome burst of interest in the climate emergency that now undeniably confronts us, ‘... the inescapable smallness, and fragility, A RARE INTELLIGENCE a plethora of books on the subject is hitting the of the entire experiment we’re engaged I couldn’t help feeling that, since Atonement shelves, but if you are spoilt for choice or short in, together, whether we like it or not … and Saturday, Ian McEwan had rather taken of time, this is the one to read. David Wallace- You can choose your metaphor. You can’t his foot off the pedal — On Chesil Beach Wells is a journalist and deputy editor ofNew choose the planet, which is the only one any seemed slight, Nutshell gimmicky and York magazine, and caused a stir with a major of us will ever call home.’ overworked, and even The Children Act was article about global warming in July 2017. This on the thin side. His new, gripping, beautifully book is an expansion of the issues discussed The strength of this book lies in the way written and constructed, disturbing, and in that article, and covers just about every that it forces the reader to confront not provocative novel is none of those things, aspect of the subject. It does so in language only the external facts, but also their own and is a thrilling read. that is at once elegant and urgent, and laced subjective responses to the threats posed The action takes place in Britain in the with powerful metaphors and striking similes; by runaway climate change. Moreover, 1980s, but not the 1980s that we knew. and it is supported by 65pages of footnotes despite the generally terrifying implications The technological revolution has already that leave one in no doubt that the author has of his ‘story of the future’, the author has a arrived. Most cars are autonomous, high- done his homework. positive message, albeit one buried in an speed trains run from London to Glasgow The first section of the book is entitled extensive footnote on page 295: in 75 minutes, and computer technology is

British Journal of General Practice, July 2019 353 very sophisticated. Much of this has to do I don’t know who advised McEwan on medicine in the Middle Ages started from an with the fact that Alan Turing is still alive and the technical content of this book, but understanding of the body (based in Galenic is a national hero and, with barely a nod to it does seem to include a very serious humoral theory) that bore little relation to Francis Crick, has an institute named after health warning about the potentially our own. But he also connects medieval him near King’s Cross. Mrs Thatcher called adverse effects of machine learning, the medical perspectives of anatomy, physiology, a disastrous snap general election after dangerously seductive attraction of very and pathology to larger social contexts, by losing the Falklands War, and almost 3000 high speed ‘reasoning’, the development exploring the assumptions about the body British lives, and Tony Benn is the leader of of understanding and insight that may be that underlay the ways medieval people the Labour Party. Oh, and the Beatles have more apparent than real, and the chilling lived, thought, prayed, ate, and drank. The re-formed. conclusions that hyper-rationalism can author discusses, for example, not only Charlie Friend lives alone in a seedy flat in come to are brilliantly described. views on the heart’s physiology pre-dating Clapham: his horizons are not exactly broad Harvey’s arguments for the circulation of and he gets by playing the stock markets on Roger Jones, Editor, BJGP. blood, but also its increasing connections his laptop. Miranda, who is beautiful, has a with emotions and love (associations that Email: [email protected] dark secret, and is doing a PhD on the Corn still survive in ideas like heartbreak and the Laws, lives in the flat above. Charlie is in love DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp19X704465 heart as the ubiquitous symbol of love). with Miranda and they develop a close but * * * * * Each chapter is devoted to a body part, asymmetrical relationship. and provides various perspectives on it. Almost unaccountably, Charlie blows the For example, the discussion of bones last £86 000 of an inheritance on a handsome Medieval Bodies. Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages begins with medieval theories of anatomical humanoid called Adam, one of only 25 in the structure, and then turns to burial practices, world, who possesses phenomenal powers Jack Hartnell saints’ relics, and the Christian and Muslim of reasoning, analysis, and memory, and Profile Books/Wellcome Collection, 2018, theology of the resurrection of the body. looks, speaks, and behaves exactly like a HB, 352pp, £12.99, 978-1781256794 Hartnell has gathered a large number of human being. He goes for walks alone and very different sources — medical, literary, chats to the proprietor of the corner shop visual, religious — in a wonderful mosaic about Rabindranath Tagore. He has other that will challenge, amuse, and occasionally characteristics that lead to what Charlie even shock the reader. The book is designed thinks must be the first cyber-cuckolding for a general audience, and effortlessly on record. We are already in subversive connects a wide range of fascinating topics, McEwan territory. The developing plot throws up from acoustics to sexuality. While there are questions, insights, and paradoxes, about a few errors in the book (for example, the consciousness, love and affection, morality, incorrect conflation of limbo and purgatory free will, justice, nature and nurture, and on p.117), these are minor missteps and will humanity. Some of these may not be new, not affect the general reader’s enjoyment of and the machine–human interface has this rich and provocative study of a culture been the subject of science fiction for a A FASCINATING HISTORICAL JOURNEY that seems both distant from and familiar long time, but because McEwan cleverly Jack Hartnell’s Medieval Bodies is a book to our own. creates powerful echoes between what was about differences. The author forces us to William F MacLehose, happening in his alternative 1980s and the think about how differently other cultures Lecturer in history and philosophy of science, UCL, problems that we face today, and which will thought (and think) about the body, health, London. challenge us in the near future, the narrative and illness, from modern medical views. Email: [email protected] rarely seems dated, and occasionally is Hartnell, an art historian well versed in remarkably prescient. the history of medicine, demonstrates that DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp19X704477

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