Author Guide · Medical Memoir
Books Written by
Henry Marsh, the English neurosurgeon born in Oxford in 1950, took a first in Politics, Philosophy and Economics before he went to medical school. From 1987 until his retirement from the NHS in 2015 he was a consultant neurosurgeon at the Atkinson Morley Wing of St George’s Hospital in south London, where he specialised in operating on patients who are awake. Since 1992 he has also worked with surgeons in Ukraine, which the 2007 documentary The English Surgeon followed. He published his first book at 64, a memoir of operations that went right and ones that went wrong; it has been translated into 37 languages. This guide covers his 3 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 2014–2022 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Henry Marsh has written three books: Do No Harm (2014), Admissions (2017) and And Finally (2022). Start with Do No Harm, the case-by-case memoir that won the PEN Ackerley Prize in 2015; the two later books follow him into retirement and then into his own illness.
Where to Start with Henry Marsh
If you want his defining book
→ Do No Harm (2014) — the operating theatre, case by case, mistakes included.
If you want what came after the NHS
→ Admissions (2017) — retirement, and surgery in Nepal and Ukraine.
If you want the doctor as patient
→ And Finally (2022) — his cancer diagnosis and what he thinks about dying.
3 Henry Marsh Books, in Order
Do No Harm
A memoir of nearly thirty years as a brain surgeon, told in short chapters most of which are named after a condition, such as “Aneurysm”, “Meningioma” and “Infarct”. Alongside the successes, including a pregnant woman whose sight he saved, Marsh describes operations that left patients paralysed or worse, his frustration with NHS management, and his work in Ukraine. It won the PEN Ackerley Prize and a South Bank Sky Arts Award in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Guardian First Book Award.
Admissions
Written after he retired from the NHS, it follows Marsh to Nepal and Ukraine, where he kept operating and teaching, and back to the questions his career left him with: what surgeons owe their patients, how much they should say, and how people should be allowed to die. Published in the US as Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon; like Do No Harm, it was a Sunday Times bestseller.
And Finally
In his early seventies Marsh had his own brain scanned and read the images himself; soon afterwards he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The book follows him from the staff side of the hospital to the patients’ waiting room, mixed with chapters on building a dolls’ house, telling stories to his granddaughters during lockdown, Ukraine, and his argument for legalising assisted dying in the UK. Published by Jonathan Cape in September 2022.
In What Order to Read Henry Marsh
The three books form one life in order: the working surgeon, the retired surgeon, the surgeon as patient. Each stands alone, but reading them in publication order lets you watch the same man move from the operating table to the other side of it.
If you only read one, read Do No Harm. Read And Finally last, because much of its weight comes from knowing how he used to talk to his own patients.
A reading path
1. Do No Harm (2014)
2. Admissions (2017)
3. And Finally (2022)
The years · 1950–2022
Quick facts about Henry Marsh
- Known for
- Writing frankly, from the surgeon’s side, about the mistakes, doubts and decisions involved in operating on the human brain.
- 1950
- Born in Oxford
- 1987
- Consultant neurosurgeon at St George’s, London
- 1992
- First works with surgeons in Ukraine
- 2014
- Do No Harm
- 2022
- And Finally
- Born
- 5 March 1950, Oxford, the youngest of four children
- Education
- PPE at University College, Oxford (first class); medicine at the Royal Free Medical School
- Worked
- Consultant neurosurgeon, Atkinson Morley Wing, St George’s Hospital, London, until 2015
- Married
- The social anthropologist Kate Fox, author of Watching the English
- Honours
- CBE (2010); PEN Ackerley Prize (2015)
- On screen
- Your Life in Their Hands (BBC, 2004); The English Surgeon (2007), which won an Emmy in 2010
The red mark is 2014: Do No Harm, the memoir that made him known outside medicine.
How Henry Marsh Writes: The Surgeon’s Side of the Table
Marsh builds his books from single cases. In Do No Harm each short chapter is anchored on one patient and one condition, and moves between the technical detail of the operation and what he was thinking and feeling while he did it. The first sentence sets the tone: “I often have to cut into the brain, and it is something I hate doing.”
His subject is uncertainty more than triumph. He writes in detail about operations that went wrong, about patients he harmed, and about the gap between what a surgeon knows and what he tells a frightened family. The same candour extends to the institutions he worked in, the NHS hospital and the under-resourced Ukrainian clinics, and in the later books to his own body.
The prose is plain and direct, which Colin Grant, reviewing And Finally in The Guardian, called which reviewers of And Finally described as plain-speaking without being dispassionateldquo;plain-speaking without being dispassionatewhich reviewers of And Finally described as plain-speaking without being dispassionaterdquo;; he keeps the medical vocabulary but explains it in passing. For other doctors who write about their patients and themselves, see Paul Kalanithi and Atul Gawande.
Frequently asked questions about Henry Marsh’s books
How many books has Henry Marsh written?
Three: Do No Harm (2014), Admissions (2017) and And Finally (2022). All three are memoirs.
What are Henry Marsh’s books in order?
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery (2014), Admissions (2017) and And Finally: Matters of Life and Death (2022).
Where should I start with Henry Marsh?
With Do No Harm (2014), his memoir of cases from his years as a consultant neurosurgeon in London. The later books build on it.
What is Henry Marsh’s most famous book?
Do No Harm (2014). It won the PEN Ackerley Prize in 2015, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and has been translated into 37 languages.
Is Henry Marsh still a practising surgeon?
He retired from the NHS in 2015, after nearly three decades as a consultant at St George’s Hospital in London, but continued to work and teach abroad, mainly in Ukraine and Nepal, as Admissions describes.
Is Henry Marsh still alive?
Yes. He was born on 5 March 1950 in Oxford. In April 2021 he announced that he had advanced prostate cancer, and in August 2022 it was reported to be in remission; And Finally is about that illness.
What is The English Surgeon about?
A BBC Storyville documentary from 2007 that follows Marsh on his work in Ukraine, where he has worked with local neurosurgeons since 1992. It won an Emmy in 2010. An earlier BBC series about his London practice, Your Life in Their Hands (2004), won a Royal Television Society Gold Medal.
What is Henry Marsh’s view on assisted dying?
He supports legalising assisted dying in the UK. He is a patron of the campaign group My Death, My Decision and makes the case in And Finally. The question remains publicly debated, including among doctors.
What has Henry Marsh done for Ukraine?
Besides decades of surgical and teaching visits since 1992, he kept travelling there after the Russian invasion of 2022, and in 2023 co-founded the charity Hospice Ukraine with the palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke to support palliative care staff in the country.
Who is Henry Marsh’s wife?
The social anthropologist Kate Fox, author of Watching the English.
Footnotes
- Henry Marsh (neurosurgeon) — Wikipedia
- And Finally (book) — Wikipedia
- Do No Harm — Waterstones
- Admissions — Hachette UK
- Henry Marsh confronts mortality — New Statesman, 2022
- A neurosurgeon on the brain — NPR, 2015
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I often have to cut into the brain, and it is something I hate doing.”
— Henry Marsh, Do No Harm (2014), the first line
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations