Author Guide · Psychiatry and Philosophy
Books Written by
Iain McGilchrist won the English Chancellor’s Prize at Oxford in 1974, was elected a Prize Fellow of All Souls College the next year, and then left literature to train as a doctor. He became a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal hospitals in London and did research in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins. His central question joins both careers: why the brain is divided into two hemispheres, and what that means for how we see the world. The Master and His Emissary (2009) runs to 608 pages; its follow-up, The Matter with Things (2021), to 1,579 pages in two volumes. This guide covers his five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1982–2021 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Iain McGilchrist has published five books. The best known is The Master and His Emissary (2009), followed by the two-volume The Matter with Things (2021); the others are Against Criticism (1982), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning (2012) and Ways of Attending (2016). Start with The Master and His Emissary, or with the short Ways of Attending if you want the argument in brief first.
Where to Start with Iain McGilchrist
If you want his defining book
→ The Master and His Emissary (2009) — the full argument about the two hemispheres and Western culture.
If you want the argument in a short book
→ Ways of Attending (2016) — how attention shapes the world we experience.
If you want his largest and latest work
→ The Matter with Things (2021) — the two-volume follow-up, on science, reason and the sacred.
If you want his literary beginnings
→ Against Criticism (1982).
5 Iain McGilchrist Books, in Order
Against Criticism
His first book, published by Faber and Faber in 1982, written out of his years in English literature at Oxford, where he read English at New College and became a Prize Fellow of All Souls.
The Master and His Emissary
Published by Yale University Press in October 2009. Part one argues that the two hemispheres attend to the world in fundamentally different ways, the left to detail, the right to the whole; part two traces Western culture from the ancient world through the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Romanticism to the present, which he argues is increasingly dominated by the left. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, and has sold more than 200,000 copies.
The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
A 10,000-word essay published by Yale University Press in 2012, written to accompany The Master and His Emissary. It asks why people seem less happy today than fifty years ago despite greater material well-being, and links the answer to the way the two hemispheres attend to the world.
Ways of Attending
A short book, first published by Karnac and later by Routledge, which argues that attention is not a neutral act but shapes the world we experience, and that Western culture has trained us to attend in a narrow, target-driven way. It is the most compact statement of his argument.
The Matter with Things
Published by Perspectiva Press in November 2021 in two volumes and 1,579 pages. It extends the hemisphere argument of The Master and His Emissary into questions about science and how we know the world; the second volume includes a long chapter on the sacred. Rowan Williams reviewed it at length in the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2023.
In What Order to Read Iain McGilchrist
The books build on one argument, so publication order works. The Master and His Emissary lays out the hemisphere research and its history of Western culture; the two short books restate parts of it; The Matter with Things takes the same foundation into philosophy of science, knowledge and the sacred.
If 608 pages is too much to begin with, read Ways of Attending or watch the RSA Animate The Divided Brain first, then go to The Master and His Emissary. Leave The Matter with Things until last: it assumes you know the earlier book. Against Criticism stands apart, from his years as a literary scholar.
A reading path
1. Ways of Attending (2016)
2. The Master and His Emissary (2009)
3. The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning (2012)
4. The Matter with Things (2021)
The years · 1953–2025
Quick facts about Iain McGilchrist
- Known for
- He is known for arguing that the two hemispheres of the brain attend to the world in different ways, and that modern Western culture has come to favour the narrow attention of the left hemisphere.
- 1953
- Born
- 1975
- Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
- 2025
- Chancellor of Ralston College
- Born
- 1953
- Education
- Winchester College; New College, Oxford (English)
- Fellowship
- Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1975
- Medicine
- Consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal hospitals; now emeritus
- Research
- Neuroimaging research fellow, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
- Since 2025
- Chancellor of Ralston College, succeeding Jordan Peterson
The red mark is 2009: The Master and His Emissary, the book that set out his hemisphere thesis.
How Iain McGilchrist Writes: Two Ways of Paying Attention
McGilchrist builds his books on clinical and experimental evidence about the hemispheres, drawn from his own work in psychiatry and neuroimaging and from the wider research literature. From that evidence he argues that the difference between the hemispheres is not what they do but how they attend, the left to parts, categories and use, the right to the whole and to what is living and unique.
He then reads cultural history through that lens. The second half of The Master and His Emissary moves from ancient Greece and Rome through the Reformation, the Enlightenment and Romanticism to modernism and postmodernism, drawing on philosophy, painting, music and poetry as much as on science.
The books are long and argued slowly, with each claim surrounded by evidence and qualifications. The Matter with Things goes further than the earlier book, into philosophy of science and the question of the sacred. That breadth is also what his critics question: whether brain science can carry conclusions about whole civilisations.
Watch
RSA Animate: The Divided Brain
An animated version of a lecture McGilchrist gave in the RSA’s free public events programme, explaining how the divided brain has shaped the Western world.
Frequently asked questions about Iain McGilchrist’s books
How many books has Iain McGilchrist written?
Five: Against Criticism (1982), The Master and His Emissary (2009), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning (2012), Ways of Attending (2016) and the two-volume The Matter with Things (2021). He has also published research articles on neuroimaging in schizophrenia.
What are Iain McGilchrist’s books in order?
Against Criticism (1982), The Master and His Emissary (2009), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning (2012), Ways of Attending (2016) and The Matter with Things (2021).
Where should I start with Iain McGilchrist?
The Master and His Emissary (2009), which sets out his whole argument. If you want a shorter way in, start with Ways of Attending or the RSA Animate The Divided Brain, then read the main book.
What is Iain McGilchrist’s most famous book?
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009). It has sold more than 200,000 copies, was shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
What does “the master and his emissary” mean?
The Master stands for the right hemisphere and the Emissary for the left. McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere should serve the right, but that in modern Western culture the Emissary has taken over from the Master.
Is McGilchrist’s hemisphere theory accepted by neuroscientists?
It is debated. Some reviewers praised the book, among them Mary Midgley in The Guardian. Others questioned the science: The Economist said its second part had “plainly become untethered” from brain science, the psychologist Michael Corballis wrote that it “goes far beyond the neurological facts”, the philosopher Owen Flanagan called it a “caricature” of hemispheric differences, and the neurologist Adam Zeman found the thesis “hugely ambitious, absorbing and questionable”. McGilchrist frames his argument as being about two kinds of attention rather than a simple split of functions.
What is The Matter with Things about?
It is the follow-up to The Master and His Emissary, published in 2021 by Perspectiva Press in two volumes and 1,579 pages. It carries the hemisphere argument into science and how we know the world, and the second volume includes a long chapter on the sacred.
Is there a film of The Master and His Emissary?
Yes. The Divided Brain, a Canadian documentary based on the book and authorised by McGilchrist, was released around 2019. His 2011 RSA talk was also turned into the RSA Animate The Divided Brain.
Is Iain McGilchrist a psychiatrist?
Yes. After his Oxford career in English literature he trained in medicine and became a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal hospitals in London, where he was a clinical director. He is now an emeritus consultant.
What is Iain McGilchrist doing now?
In October 2025 he was appointed Chancellor of Ralston College, succeeding Jordan Peterson. He continues to lecture and appear in public conversations about his work.
Footnotes
- Iain McGilchrist — Wikipedia
- The Master and His Emissary — Wikipedia
- A Brain of Two Minds, Rowan Williams — Los Angeles Review of Books, 2023
- RSA Animate – The Divided Brain — RSA
- Other books — Channel McGilchrist
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.
“Poetry comes from the right hemisphere but, interestingly, language comes largely from the left.”
— Iain McGilchrist, on the divided brain
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