A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body: thought-provoking and eloquent. * Hilary Mantel *
Wonderful, subtle, unpretentious ... produces a kind of complicity between the author, the reader, and the subject * John Berger *
Praise for Empire Antarctica: Francis' best writing (and it is excellent)... is Robert Macfarlane on ice. This writing achieves the 'quilted quality' of silence, and through it we are brought to a new landscape of words. * Literary Review *
A beautiful, profound and highly readable account of a remarkable personal adventure. Francis's pacing is deft, his prose vivid, his research worn lightly. Empire Antarctica is surely destined to become a standard, not so much of travel as of staying very still. * Daily Telegraph *
Empire Antarctica is the embodiment of everything I admire in travel writing -- a great journey, intense isolation, wide reading, vivid writing, scientific research, and something in the nature of an old-fashioned ordeal. That Gavin Francis is a medical doctor, with an important role to play in the darkness and cold at the ends of the earth, is a bonus. I loved this book. -- Paul Theroux
I read this book transfixed... The style is crisp and fast and the human tales irresistible. I was left with many nuggets. -- Melanie Reid * The Times *
In Francis's beautifully written, exquisitely thoughtful, and completely captivating cartography, the body is a superbly-lit museum filled with treasures, and Dr. Francis the perfect guide who deftly weaves together science and story to reveal the wondrous flesh-and-blood underpinnings of our daily lives. It's a spellbinding view. -- Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper's Wife and The Human Age
So enthralling and so well written that it should win its own clutch of prizes... immensely engaging and often unexpected. His achievement here is to guide readers through his special landscape with such eloquence and subtlety. -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *
Grand, eloquent stuff, occasionally humorous, frequently moving and invariably informative... The end result is a thoroughly entertaining, provocative work. -- Robin McKie * The Observer *
A quietly radical, three-dimensional view of issues such as reproduction, birth, death and disability that has the power, at times, to make you stop mid-sentence and carefully reassess some of your most basic assumptions... its greatest strength is its profound yet understated compassion. * The Scotsman *
The joy of Mr Francis's work lies in the fact that although he delights in the body's physical reality, he takes care not to reduce human experience to that alone. * The Economist *
A beautifully written, elegant series of essays - both medical and literary - that conveys wonderfully well the fascination, mystery and beauty that is to be found in our bodies. -- Henry Marsh
Adventures in Human Being could be described as a road map to the flesh, written by a guide who is scrupulously attentive to the details of how we work and exquisitely aware of the glimpses of the soul behind the machinery. Francis is not only an experienced doctor but also steeped in both the classics and contemporary literature. His breadth is not just impressive but entirely convincing. -- John Burnside * New Statesman *
A wise and lyrical tour of the human body -- Kirsty Logan * The Scottish Herald *
A beautifully written guide to our wonders and weaknesses that combines the precision of science with a profound insight into the human condition. -- P D Smith * Guardian *
