Smoking kills

One of the ineffable pleasures of life is reviewing proposals that publishers receive from aspiring authors. Publishers reward reviewers handsomely in cash or kind for this service: they invest a lot of money in making, marketing, promoting the books they publish; if the book is rubbish that nobody buys, the loss is substantial. In the case of scholarly books, scientific books, textbooks, reference books and the like, reviewers provide a vital additional service, a detailed critical review, analyzing the science, the logic, the new discovery, whatever, that the book is about. Sometimes my reviews of books in that category were many pages of single-spaced typescript in length. One long review of that sort (a negative review, advising the publisher not to invest in publishing the book in question despite an eloquent proposal, detailed outline, and sample chapter) earned me a fee of $500. The book was eventually published of course, by another publisher; and reviewers for specialized journals cut it to pieces; it sold very few copies, and later I saw whole rows of remaindered copies in a New York book shop. I reviewed many proposals for Oxford University Press and almost always asked for books to the value of the money I would otherwise have earned. My book shelves, and our grandchildren's, are the richer for this. About five years ago I reviewed for the Wellcome Foundation for the History of Medicine, a proposal by Conrad Keating for a biography of Richard Doll. The book has been published, and I've been reading it with the same kind of ineffable pleasure that I got from reading the original proposal and many others like it.

I knew Richard Doll for about 50 years, at first as a highly respected colleague in my field, then as a friend. I met his wife, Dr Joan Faulkner, who was the executive secretary of the Medical Research Council, early in 1961 when I was a visiting fellow in the MRC Social Medicine Research Unit, then met, or rather heard Richard speak, on several occasions later during the same year. I first got to know him and his wife Joan as friends when they stayed with us at our home on Island Park Drive in the early 1970s. Our rather snobbish neighbour was horrified that Sir Richard and Lady Doll were shucking strawberries in our kitchen, helping Wendy and me to prepare for the guests -- my colleagues and assorted dignitaries -- whom we had invited to meet the Dolls that evening. I didn't bother to mention to that neighbour that Richard Doll, like several other distinguished British doctors who grew up in the 1930s, was for many years an active member of the Communist Party; perhaps I should have. During the last 10-15 years or so of his life, I became, as he was, one of the elder statesmen of the International Epidemiological Association, although of course I merit that term "elder statesman" many orders of magnitude less than he! And during those years we became good friends who shared many values beyond our commitment to epidemiology. The book that Conrad Keating has written, Smoking Kills: the revolutionary life of Richard Doll, is excellent. Keating writes well, explains and interprets for lay readers the results of Richard Doll's research with accuracy, clarity and eloquence that rarely grace the prose of non-scientists who write about science. For me there is the added pleasure of knowing as colleagues and often as friends a high proportion of the people mentioned by name in the book. I've seldom enjoyed a biography more than this one, indeed on reflection, I don't think I ever have. I'm sorry to say that the book is not very well made -- like a few others sponsored by the Wellcome Foundation, I am left with the impression that they went to tender to get it published, and selected the lowest bidder. The end result is acceptable, just, but could have been so much better if the book had been published by one of the university presses for instance. It's a small blemish though. The contents count for more that the slightly shoddy book-making. And I give the contents three thumbs up.