Baroness Susan Greenfield was born in London and studied experimental psychology at Oxford, gaining her DPhil in 1977. Her work focuses on the physiology of the brain, with an emphasis on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and on the impact of 21st-century technologies on the mind, which she describes as “mind change”. She was named woman of the year by the Observer in 2000, and in 2006 was made an honorary fellow of the British Science Association. Greenfield sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher. Her latest book, A Day in the Life of the Brain: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn Till Dusk, published by Allen Lane (£20), is out now.
1 | TV documentary
This is a 26-part TV series about the second world war; I watch the box set from time to time. It’s narrated by Laurence Olivier, who had the most mesmerising voice. Although it’s from the 70s, that’s part of its appeal because a lot of the people who are interviewed were in the war and are now no longer around. So it has an immediacy that you wouldn’t have with something that was later and perhaps more slick. Rather than doing it chronologically they take a particular country or thing, so you feel you’re looking at aspects of the war in depth. It’s really compelling, even 40 years on, with our sophisticated media expectations.
2 | Restaurant
This is my favourite restaurant at the moment: it’s simple but does what it says it does – the service is friendly, the food is delicious and served promptly. I like the atmosphere, there’s no loud music – it’s just a very nice place and is not in any way pretentious; it’s not some Michelin-starred place. I love going there with friends; in fact, I was in there last week to celebrate someone’s birthday. It might also be that I lived in France for a year so it brings back a lot of memories: it reminds me of going out for “an ordinary meal” in Paris. But it’s not ordinary at all, by my standards – it’s lovely.
3 | Place
I didn’t know of the existence of this place until last month. It’s an art centre where they have a gallery and performances and a restaurant, in a stunning location by a lake, about 10 miles outside Stockholm. The sun was shining and I just thought it was a lovely place and how lucky the people of Stockholm were to have it on their doorstep. I know there are art galleries elsewhere, but this had a very calming and reflective feel to it. It’s a mixture of food, art, architecture and landscape, and the fact it’s serving a community and promoting art and interaction struck me as something that was of a huge benefit to society.
4 | Fiction
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958)
I have read this novel over and over again. It was written by a minor nobleman and was the only book he ever wrote, towards the end of his life. He was considered a bit of a dilettante. But it’s brilliantly described: it’s about the clash of the middle-class bourgeoisie with the old aristocracy in Sicily at the time of Garibaldi. At one stage I used to give it to people to see how they responded, and if they liked it we went further. It’s a good example of how the book is better than the film, and how one’s imagination can be triggered by the right kind of writing in a way that seeing someone else’s on screen never can be.
5 | TV series
I came across this on a flight to Australia; I came back and bought the second series and was hyperventilating with excitement. You might say, “This is such a boring old thing, two married people having an affair.” But it’s the way it’s acted and the subtleties of the characters. It’s a slightly… not cynical, but I think realistic view of relationships. It’s not romantic, although everybody’s good-looking in it. The whole thing is fabulously filmed and it’s set on the east coast of the States, so there’s a bit of escape for anyone who’s English. I wouldn’t want it to be any longer or shorter: it’s like a good meal where you think, “I really enjoyed that; that was perfect.”
6 | Painting
The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke by Richard Dadd (1855-64)
This is a painting that has meant a lot to me for a long time: it’s so detailed and is the sort of thing you want to stare at and stare at. There’s no light at all in the painting, so somehow it touches one’s melancholy side in a brooding Victorian way. The colour is all sludgy and dirty, but what I find most intriguing is the ambiguous tension between the guy with the axe and the strange creature in front of him. There’s also something still alluring about fairies, but fairies in an evil sense. These are not pretty little things you stick on Christmas trees; they’re malign, dark creatures that in Victorian times were perhaps very real to people.
7 | Nonfiction
The Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford (2015)
In Sweden I gave a talk to a company who are interested in robots making decisions in investments, and I was given this book as a present. It’s the kind of thing I intuitively disagree with – machine intelligence is so far away from human intelligence – but that doesn’t negate the fact that in the future, robotics and robots could take over a lot of jobs from humans. The question is more, what do we do with our time. Ford entertains the idea of an income you don’t work for and that opens up lots of possibilities about what our future society might be. But my own view is that humans can do certain things that robots never will, like be creative and have intuition and common sense.
