The Knife Man

Reviews / Votes

Wendy Moore has done justice to this marvellous man in a biography packed with gruesome facts and eye-opening perceptions. It is an accomplished achievement and a splendid read * The Times * Moore's feel for pace and narrative is impeccable. She excels on the nitty-gritty of his work - the carving, digging, slicing and bottling - but makes us understand why these horrors were wonders. She is, at last, the biographer Hunter deserves * Independent * The primitive operations without anaesthesia, the bitter rivalries and battles, the struggle against snobbery and orthodoxy - all set against a kaleidoscopic Hogarthian backdrop of gin-shops, brothels, elegant drawing rooms, charnel houses and crude operating theatres. This is a truly fascinating read -- Dr Alan Maryon Davis, Writer and Snr Consultant, Guy's Hospital Marvellous... There is wit here, without banality; there is scholarship, without pomposity; there is history of the Georgian period that drives you to seek more about that same period - and there can be no greater compliment for a biographer. A classic unputdownable page-turner. It's a winner all round - and now I've finished it, I'm going to start all over again -- Claire Rayner, writer and health adviser Wendy Moore has written an immensely readable account of one of the most fascinating individuals of the 18th century. A thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining biography -- Patrick McGrath, author of Port Mungo Always vivid and entertaining... The Knife Man leaves one entranced with Moore's hero and the age in which he lived -- James Le Fanu, Literary Review Excellent... Moore has helped to pay the debt we all owe to this short-tempered dyslexic healer, who slept only four hours a night and claimed to have dissected some 2,000 corpses * Sunday Telegraph * Gruesome but fascinating... Not for the squeamish, this visceral portrait offers a wonderful insight into sickness, suffering and surgery in the 18th century. Excellent * Guardian * Moore's tireless devotion to detail brings the man and his maverick career vividly, compellingly, gruesomely to life... Medicine needs more John Hunters, and biography needs more Wendy Moores * The New York Times * An extraordinary insight into the experimental, macabre world of a remarkable eighteenth- century surgeon who risked all to learn about the hitherto unknown workings of the human body -- Josceline Dimbleby, author of A Profound Secret