Actor, doctor, TV presenter, film director, opera director, sculptor - Sir Jonathan Miller's careers cover a vast range. He is also a gifted and insightful writer, but his writings have been scattered across a series of books and articles over the last sixty years. This selection gives an idea of the depth and variety of his preoccupations, from mesmerism to neurology, film and theatre to art history and technique, parody to reportage. Each extract has an introduction by Miller, setting it in the context of his interests in the arts and sciences. With wit and perception, Miller casts light on many aspects of the world which we take for granted, and illuminates them with original insights. His writings incorporate ideas and techniques which have made Miller a unique presence on the cultural scene, gathered together here for the first time in one collection.

Jonathan Miller is a genius whose passionate and agile mind takes all of human behaviour as its subject. He is as playful and full of humour as he is serious and profound, ranging easily from the ways in which minute body movements inflect a performance to his abiding interest in artists' representation of the human form. Miller is equally at home with physiology, philosophy, and psychology, and what he has to say is always surprising and insightful. On Further Reflection is dazzling from beginning to end. OLIVER SACKS. AUTHOR OF THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT