Michael Farthing’s career has been as an academic physician in the UK and USA. In addition he has conducted medical research in several low-income countries including India, Zambia, South Africa and Belize and has written many scientific papers and medical books. Since leaving medicine, he has published a critique of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and a ‘memoire plus’, Finding India, which explored the emergence of modern, independent India tracked across the last fifty years through the eyes of a foreigner. He is an Honorary Professor at University College London, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and lives between London and Sussex. His wife is a radiologist and they have two sons, an artist and an actor.