Raymond Tallis was Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester until 2006. A poet, novelist and philosopher, he was listed by the Independent in 2007 as one of fifty 'Brains of Britain', and in 2005 Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's leading Public Intellectuals. The Raymond Tallis Reader was published in 2000 by Palgrave Macmillan, and his most recent book, Hippocratic Oaths, was published in 2004 by Atlantic Books.