Our Neurology Book Club had the pleasure of meeting to discuss The President’s Hat by Antoine Laurain. Grumblings about the usual tendency of our group to select books of a gloomy and sometimes tragic nature had led to the suggestion of Laurain’s light-hearted and whimsical novel. The President’s Hat tells the tale of four characters in 1980s Paris, whose lives are transformed by their donning of the hat of President François Mitterrand. The book was described as ‘Parisian perfection’ by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. There was agreement that the book was an enjoyable and light-hearted read. But could the group uncover a neurological dimension?

This nostalgic story opens with an introduction to Daniel Mercier, a conventional executive accountant, who dines one evening in a brasserie and, to his delight, finds himself sitting next to François Mitterrand, then president of France. Mitterrand forgets his …