SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE The Emperor of All Maladies ***

I bought this book on the strength of an interview with the author on the ‘Today’ programme, and for the most part enjoyed it.

Mukherjee is a cancer specialist, but he can also write, which is why he won the Guardian first book award last year.

It’s described as ‘a biography of cancer’, and it is a fascinating account of this disease (or collection of diseases) and tells the story of centuries of discoveries, setbacks and achievements, and the different ways of looking at the disease.

I found it interesting how the different medical specialists tend to have taken blinkered views of cancer. The surgeons were convinced that if you could only cut out enough tissue that would sort it. The radiotherapists thought it was just a case of being able to target the tumours precisely enough. And the chemotherapists were looking for the one drug that would kill all cancers. And now there are the gene therapists.

I have to admit I did skip some pages when the science – especially the chemistry – got a bit too heavy for me, but because there are plenty of human stories in there I soldiered on and learned a lot.