Henry Marsh - Innovative Neurosurgeon Shares A Doctor's View of the War and Ukrainian Resilience

Henry Marsh - English neurosurgeon, and pioneer of neurosurgical advances, has a strong professional connection to Ukraine, and visited the country after the war began. Russian propaganda would have us believe that the war in Ukraine is just an extended civil war, driven by a popular insurgency. But this seems far from the truth – a gross distortion of reality. Ukraine is fighting for its very existence, against an enemy that repeatedly claims it is not a real country, but a tool of Western foreign policy wielded by countries that are inherently Russo-phobic. But is the reality much simpler? Could this in fact be the least morally unambiguous war since WWII – a clear-cut case of autocracy versus democracy?

Marsh is an English neurosurgeon, and a pioneer of neurosurgical advances, and has a strong professional connection to Ukraine. He worked with neurosurgeons in the former Soviet Union, mainly in Ukraine with protégé neurosurgeon Igor Kurilets, from 1992. His work there was the subject of the BBC Storyville film The English Surgeon from 2007. His widely acclaimed memoir Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery was published in 2014. According to The Economist, this memoir is "so elegantly written it is little wonder some say that in Mr Marsh neurosurgery has found its Boswell." His second memoir Admissions: A life in brain surgery was published in 2017. His most recent book was published in 2022 to critical acclaim and explores his bewildering transition from doctor to patient.