Roy Porter, who died in March 2002, was a great and prolific historian. By the age of 55, when he fell dead from his bicycle as he pedalled to his allotment, he had allegedly published more than 80 books (estimates vary — some say 100 books). He had just taken early retirement from the post of Professor of the History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute, where he pioneered a new kind of socio-medical history. His ‘last’ book, Madness: A Brief History, was published in March this year, and here is yet another ‘last’. No doubt there will be others.
Porter here sets out to write the history of the self — that is, the history of the soul, body and mind in the Enlightenment. Simon Schama, who wrote a foreword, hails this book as Porter’s posthumous masterpiece. It is massively ambitious, but masterpiece it is not. Do not be deceived by the snappy title. This is a difficult, unwieldy and uneven book, alternating between flashes of brilliance and slabs of turgid heavy going which are almost unreadable.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.