The Knife Man

A brilliant study of the medical life and times of Georgian Britain. This is a tour de force.

The Good Book Guide

A fine piece of work and I found it hard to believe that it is the author's first book. It is carefully researched, engagingly written and generously illustrated

Sunday Herald

Always vivid and entertaining... The Knife Man leaves one entranced with Moore's hero and the age in which he lived

James Le Fanu, Literary Review

An extraordinary insight into the experimental, macabre world of a remarkable eighteenth- century surgeon who risked all to learn about the hitherto unknown workings of the human body

Josceline Dimbleby, author of A Profound Secret

Excellent... Moore has helped to pay the debt we all owe to this short-tempered dyslexic healer, who slept only four hours a night and claimed to have dissected some 2,000 corpses

Sunday Telegraph

Gruesome but fascinating... Not for the squeamish, this visceral portrait offers a wonderful insight into sickness, suffering and surgery in the 18th century. Excellent

Guardian

Here is a perfect subject for a biography: an exciting and informed account of Hunter's life and times

Publishing News

Marvellous... Moore's detailed and sympathetic portrait will do much to make Hunter a less enigmatic figure... This book should be the point of departure for anybody interested in the life and work of this most extraordinary Georgian

Times Higher Educational Supplement

Marvellous... There is wit here, without banality; there is scholarship, without pomposity; there is history of the Georgian period that drives you to seek more about that same period - and there can be no greater compliment for a biographer. A classic unputdownable page-turner. It's a winner all round - and now I've finished it, I'm going to start all over again

Claire Rayner, writer and health adviser

Moore's feel for pace and narrative is impeccable. She excels on the nitty-gritty of his work - the carving, digging, slicing and bottling - but makes us understand why these horrors were wonders. She is, at last, the biographer Hunter deserves

Independent

Moore's tireless devotion to detail brings the man and his maverick career vividly, compellingly, gruesomely to life... Medicine needs more John Hunters, and biography needs more Wendy Moores

The New York Times

The primitive operations without anaesthesia, the bitter rivalries and battles, the struggle against snobbery and orthodoxy - all set against a kaleidoscopic Hogarthian backdrop of gin-shops, brothels, elegant drawing rooms, charnel houses and crude operating theatres. This is a truly fascinating read

Dr Alan Maryon Davis, Writer and Snr Consultant, Guy’s Hospital

Wendy Moore has done justice to this marvellous man in a biography packed with gruesome facts and eye-opening perceptions. It is an accomplished achievement and a splendid read

The Times

Wendy Moore has written an immensely readable account of one of the most fascinating individuals of the 18th century. A thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining biography

Patrick McGrath, author of Port Mungo

Wendy Moore is to be commended for an endlessly informative book which draws on a vast number of sources...

Glasgow Herald