To my surprise I don’t miss neurosurgery now I’ve retired, but still find joy in making things for my grandchildren
The pictures on my iPhone photo roll for the past two years are mainly of my granddaughters and, more recently, of my newborn grandson, interspersed with destroyed and rusty Russian tanks in Ukraine, where I went this year, having regularly travelled to teach surgery therefor 30 years.
But there are also a few pictures from the workshop at the bottom of my garden of the doll’s house I have been building for Lizzie, my youngest granddaughter. I started working on it during lockdown and hope to finish it by Christmas. I suppose in some ways it is a substitute for operative neurosurgery as I “hung up my gloves” – as surgeons call retiring – more than two years ago, although I continue to teach and lecture.
Henry Marsh’s latest book, And Finally: Matters of Life and Death, is out now
