The neurosurgeon shadowed by Ian McEwan for his latest book

Abstract

N eil Kitchen is a consultant neurosurgeon and associate clinical director at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. He studied medicine at Bart's and University College Hospitals in London and at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. (He opted to do his clinical training at Addenbrooke's because it was six months shorter than in London and he says he was impatient.) Before heading up to Cambridge he squeezed in a BSc in the history of medicine at the Wellcome Institute. He briefly flirted with ophthalmology and spent a month at the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem before taking up a surgical house post at Addenbrooke's. Mr Kitchen has also worked at Bart's, Charing Cross Hospital, the Royal Free, Atkinson Morley's, Southend Hospital, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.⇓ He was introduced to me by a mutual friend, …