Lyric poets and mathematicians, by general agreement, do their best work young, while composers and conductors are evergreen, doing their best work, or more work of the same kind, as they age. Philosophers seem to be a more mixed bag: some shine early and some, like Wittgenstein, have distinct chapters of youth and middle age; Bertrand Russell went on tirelessly until he was almost a hundred. Yet surely few will surpass the record of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who
Four years ago, when I was chair of the health treatment watchdog NICE, I developed cancer of the head and neck.
My career had taken me from the grassroots of the NHS — I spent 36 years as a rural GP — to the service’s commanding heights.
Cancer brought me right to the heart of the health service as an anxious patient. I found myself needing urgent and aggressive treatment.
This meant undergoing two operations, followed by 30 sessions of
