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.