The Ecology, Cosmos & Consciousness salon presents:

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment

Prof Andrew Lees in conversation with Jim Pennington

Tuesday, 24th May, 2016

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

Entry £8 /£6 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine & Beer available

In this extraordinary caprice, neuroscientist Andrew Lees explains how William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, thinker, drug addict and innovator, played an unlikely part in his medical career. Lees draws on Burroughs’ search for an addiction cure to discover a ground-breaking treatment for shaking palsy, and learns how to use the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes to diagnose patients. Lees follows Burroughs into the rainforest and under the influence of yagé (ayahuasca) gains insights that encourage him to pursue new lines of pharmacological research and explore new forms of science.

Prof Andrew Lees was born on Merseyside and is a Professor of Neurology at The National Hospital, Queen Square and University College London, and is in the top three most highly cited Parkinson’s disease researchers in the world and included in Thomson Reuters 2015 List of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

He has written the authorised biography of the Arsenal and Liverpool footballer Ray Kennedy who developed Parkinson’s disease in his early thirties (Ray of Hope, Penguin 1994) subsequently made into a TV documentary, Liverpool the Hurricane Port (Random House 2011), Alzheimer’s: The Silent Plague (2012 Penguin) and William Richard Gowers (1845-1915) Exploring the Victorian Brain, a biography co-authroed with Ann Scott and Mervyn Eadie (OUP 2012). His latest book Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions) explains his unlikely association with the author of Naked Lunch in his curiosity to find neurological cures. He has also written essays published in Dublin Review of Books, Empty Mirror, Tears in the Fence and Scottish Review of Books.

Jim Pennington has worked as a printer and in the trade since leaving the London College of Printing in 1972. He co-edits and produces, with Allen Fisher, numerous publications under the Aloes Books / Spanner imprint. Amongst the works published are books by Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, Max Blagg, Jeff Nuttall and Patti Smith. Current research is concentrating on the time William Burroughs spent in London during the 60s, and the rocket science required to be a cosmonaut of Inner Space. Recent printing activities involve experiments on Gestetner stencil duplicators.