Is It Time To Re-Think Autism?

When Daniel Tammet was three years old, he fell down the stairs of the terraced family home he shared with his parents in Dagenham. It is his earliest memory, not just for the pain of the bumps and bruises, but because as he tumbled he could see golden sparks falling all around him. In later years, he started to experience occasional seizures; and whenever somebody shouted he would see the colour blue.

“At school I just always thought in a different way,” he says. “The other children didn’t understand me but luckily I had good teachers and a library I could go to.”

To date, Tammet (who was diagnosed with high-functioning autism in 2004, at the age of 25) has written four books (including his memoirs, neuroscience, and a collection of essays on maths) and sold more than a million copies. His writing is translated into 23 languages, 10 of which he himself can speak. Yet what most of us perceive to be simple social skills like displaying empathy and talking to strangers, Tammet admits, have been far more...