Thomas Wright wins Wellcome Book Prize Thomas Wright is the 2012 winner of the £25,000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize for Circulation, his biography of the pioneering 17th-century English physician William Harvey. The book charts Harvey's desire to understand the movement of blood in the body. He controversially overturned beliefs held by anatomists and physicians since Roman times, yet nowadays he is not widely known. The book contains vivid descriptions of Harvey's performances during public dissections. It is also rich with widely known historical characters from the era, such as Francis Bacon. One of Harvey's more recalcitrant patients, John Donne, who was fascinated with anatomy and the human heart, also makes an appearance, as does Charles I, a patron and witness to Harvey's experiments. Mark Lawson, the chairman of the judging panel, said the book "combines scholarly science with such narrative excitement that it will be a great surprise if we do not eventually see Circulation: The Movie." The author Thomas Wright lives in London and Genoa. His first book, Table Talk of Oscar Wilde, was chosen by Simon Callow as one of his books of the year; it was followed by Oscar's Books, published in 2008. Circulation is his third book. The other shortlisted books were The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates; The Train in the Night by Nick Coleman; Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif; Perfect People by Peter James; and Merivel: A Man of his Time by Rose Tremain. The Wellcome Trust Book Prize is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the themes of health and medicine.