Introduction

This fascinating anthology introduces us to a wide range of arguments on the subject of memory, the thread that holds our lives, and our history, together. Arranged in themed sections, the book includes specially commissioned essays by the editors and by writers with expertise in different fields - from Memory and Evolution by Patrick Bateson to Memory and Forgetting by the biographer Richard Holmes, and an account of the chemistry of the brain by Steven Rose.

Complementing the essays are a rich selection of extracts from writers and thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, Montaigne and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Proust, Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami. Stimulating, provocative, funny or profoundly moving, Memory is a book to treasure - and remember.