With that kind of information available in profusion, you can tell that this is not just a serious exposition of scientific theory, but a collector's scrapbook. Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College, London, has devoted his career to "handedness and lateralization", and his files are full of curious observations. Among them are many items of left-hander lore that he is at pains to demolish, such as the old-wives' claims that left-handers are more creative than the rest of us, or die younger, or that because the Gaelic root of their name means "awkward", people called Kerr and Carr are more predominantly left-handed than the population at large.