Zbigniew Kotowicz obituary

My friend Zbigniew Kotowicz, who has died of cancer aged 67, was a rare, proud, sometimes solitary man with a gift for friendship. He wrote four acclaimed books: on the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, on the neurologist Egas Moniz (originator of psycho-surgery), on the psychiatrist RD Laing and on the philosopher Gaston Bachelard. The books themselves are impressive, but their range more striking still. In an age of specialisation, Zbigniew was something of a polymath.

A love of literature took root early, as did a radical's commitment to the political left, broadly construed. Psychology and psychoanalysis followed. Then philosophy offered him a way to exercise his restless intelligence more freely. Its greatest gift was an introduction to the work of Bachelard, who became the point around which all his thinking turned.