Bless Up
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Don’t Quit
“… the power of example speaks more forcefully than other communication.” Matthieu Ricard
The suggestion for this book came from Bernard Ginsborg, my mentor and friend, when I asked the silly question: “What should I do next?” His response: “Write an autobiography”, given in the hope that it would occupy me for 10 years at least and stave off other silly questions. What lies beyond is a memoir for the period 1938 to 1960, a crucial period in my life.
In 1994 I moved to
Many memoirs are plain ego trips. Well aware of that judgement, I pressed on with writing this one nevertheless. What drove me on was the belief that people influence others, often unawares. In his poem To My Friends, Primo Levi wrote:
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Everyone stamped by everyone.
When I weigh what I might count as achievements, I must grant the key influence of others. Probably the only virtue (?) that I can claim for myself is stark doggedness. That ensured completion of this work. Readers, I hope, will not wish that I were less stubborn. But the quest to record the people and events that stamped me outweighs that risk.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
This book is about the origin of a scientist, born into unpromising conditions in
Running in parallel with the author's school and university education was a train of lowly jobs starting at the age of twelve. He learned valuable lessons about human nature as a dishwasher, barman and tram conductor. Indeed, the value of those lessons outdid and outlasted the academic benefits of his lectures at
The theme of this book is that we are often stamped by the others we meet. And those “others” are usually unaware of the unending influence they create in our lives. Sometimes minor events lodge in our memory with their allied emotional tones bringing good or ill. Examples in this book illustrate the paradox that now and again the absence of someone, who should be in your life, has a more profound effect than the presence of most people in your daily life. And those absentees may be totally unaware of their significance.
The title and chapter headings come from the author's life in
About the Author
Randall House is Professor of Neuroscience and Vice Provost for the Keith B. Taylor Global Scholars Program in medicine at Northumbria University in Newcastle. He was raised in a single-parent home in Glasgow at the end of the second world war and educated at Queens Park School and the Universities of Glasgow, Birmingham and Edinburgh, Without advice, he struggled to find a scientific path into his desired field of biophysics and, eventually, neuroscience. During his early years House saw the hardship and humour in ordinary lives and witnessed internationally renowned scientists at work. Though he had a contrasting vision of two worlds, one of the poverty of many and the other of the privilege of a few, House accepted the difference even-handedly because each lent value to his study of how people conduct themselves.
Dr House has held posts in Edinburgh University, the University of East Anglia, Columbia University and St. George's University in Grenada in the West Indies. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and a Physiological Society Monograph entitled “Water Transport in Cells and Tissues” published by Edward Arnold. In 1982 House was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 2006 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Physiological Society.