If we move quickly, there may be time to find ways of publicly debating these possible advances before they happen. The result would be a social revolution: for the first time, technologies would not be foisted upon us simply because they are possible, and profitable. We are moving towards a “psychocivilised society” – in which individualism co-exists with sophisticated methods of control and seemingly non-violent coercion.Rose is keen not to overstate the threats. The real issue, he says, “is not so much how to curb the technologies but how to control the state”. All the same, burgeoning neurotechnologies do need watching, not least because they “help to shape who we are”. As technology shifts, “so do our concepts of personhood”.Cloning and GM crops may have already bolted out of the stable, but “comparable technological successes in the neurosciences are still in the future”, he argues. He explains how intricate and subtle our brains are in the first half of the book.

In the final, most engaging, chapters he discusses current attempts to target potential criminals, subdue troublesome children or modify emotions, and ends with a look into the future.”Neuromarketing” is the latest craze; Ford and DaimlerChrysler are using brain imaging to improve the appeal of their cars, while US researchers are investigating “the neural processes involved in choosing between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola”. Most worryingly, perhaps, is the US government’s “biodefence” budget.Brain scans are said to have the potential to pinpoint psychopaths before they kill, reveal racial prejudice or a belief in God, and distinguish “true” memories from “false”. He revels in deflating overblown claims on the genetics and neurobiology of “criminality”, “homosexuality” or “IQ”.Rose is sceptical about such findings, and about pharmacological “cures” for depression or dementia. A star undergraduate at Cambridge, he moved to London, and then to the Open University, to study brain chemistry just as molecular techniques were bringing genes to the fore. Steven Rose is a rare scientist, equally interested in society and how it ticks.

Long cold-shouldered by the scientific establishment for his socialist views and implacable stance, Rose has stuck to his metaphorical guns. This book is the latest in a prolific writing career that began in the 1960s with a classic Penguin, The Chemistry of Life. Rose’s new book is a magisterial synthesis of genetics, developmental biology and neuro- science. The 21st-Century Brain is an elegantly written and cogent guide to contemporary ideas about how and why the brain works. But don’t expect a bland account; Rose enjoys taking pot shots at researchers with whom he disagrees. To prove their viability, the ageing engage in contests with their juniors.

As a result of the eugenic weeding, worthless young men are fast-tracked to the judicial bench.The official line in this society is that to be a good son is the same as being a good subject, for a King is a father to his people. But there’s a painful, inherent contradiction in a piece where the monarch appears to sanction the impiety of state-assisted parricide. Not that the enigmatic ruler here is all that he seems; and the production could do more to give him a visually sharper relationship with his experimental creation.I doubt if this play will become a fixture in the repertoire, but Holmes’ production, at once highly diverting and disturbing, establishes it as much more than a cranky curiosity.To 3 November (0870 609 1110). Seventies glam rock is the preferred sartorial style of the calculating, cowardly, young swine, who can’t wait to get their hands on the parental wealth in order to blow it all on fashionable retro-clobber. Their ringleader is Simonides, played with an arresting, tart-with-no-heart pertness and with transparent bad faith oozing from his Northern Irish cadences by the very talented Jonjo O’Neill.In this Liquorice Allsort-coloured world, unedifying practices abound as a result of the new edict.