Colin wanted... the book, some parts of the book, to be... to come out in newspapers first, but this would have delayed the publication of the book from June, which was the original slated date. I wanted it published in June because I was going to be 40 on July 9^th and I wanted to feel that I had written something by the age of 40. I also didn’t like the idea of the book dribbling out.

So the book came out on June 28^th and here, unlike Migraine, which had had an equal response both from general reviewers and medical reviewers, there was a complete gap with Awakenings which got very well reviewed in the press generally, especially after [Al] Alvarez’s review, but there was not a murmur from my colleagues. There was no mention of the book in the medical press. Later, in January of '74, I... there was an article by the editor of a rather briefly lived paper called The British Clinical Journal. And he said that he thought the two strangest... two of the strangest phenomena in England in the preceding year had been the publication of Awakenings, and what he called the 'mutism' of the profession, and the complete lack of medical response to it. But there was plenty of general response, and in December, Colin had a sort of celebration and Christmas party combined. And all sorts of people came along, including my father who was recovering from a... a year of mourning for my mother. And my father, who had been so anxious about my publishing, now saw that there are... there were all sorts of eminent people there and it seemed to be okay. And Jonathan said to me, 'You’re famous now'. And... although I didn’t really know what it meant, no-one had ever said anything like to me before. He of course had been famous for, you know, for... years, from Beyond the Fringe, or... or before that... whatever famous means.