A Body Made of Glass

Clarity and beauty combine with terror and dark comedy - essential reading for everyone who has a body. And yes - that means every single reader in the world – Lucy Worsley[A] deeply researched, subtly argued history of the condition…written with elegance and flashes of humour… Crampton is skilled at uncovering hidden connections, charting how ideas about health and medicine rise, fall and re-emerge over centuries… Memorable and vivid * Sunday Times *A clever blend of memoir and science writing that elevates a funny and faintly ridiculous subject into a piece of cultural history * Mail on Sunday *Blending memoir and cultural history, A Body Made of Glass is lucid, broad in scope, full of nuanced reflection and digs deep into concepts of rationality, language, trauma, the brain v the body, class, gender and the inequity of health services * Guardian *Ambitious… Her precise and visceral recollections make real and corporeal a condition that some claim is neither… A Body Made of Glass is a wide-ranging work, moving from personal story to literary analysis to the history of medicine and back again * New Statesman *With extensive experience in the worlds of the medically explained and the medically unexplained, Crampton is perfectly placed to write this fascinating and intelligent cultural history of health anxiety, suffused with the intensity of feeling that hypochondria ignites, as well as the insight that it often precludes * Observer *In tying her own experience, as if by an invisible thread, to numerous intellectual giants and fictional characters across time, [Crampton] offers us a rounder taste of her condition… Her unflinching interrogation of hypochondria and its evolution leads to fascinating cultural observations * Irish Times *Masterful… [a] very readable account of the history of hypochondria as a concept in human history; and its implications for how we think about what is real, what is normal and how we relate to our bodies… A profound work – Dr Gwen AdsheadA fascinating history of health anxiety * Guardian *An intelligent, vulnerable and learned book about a condition so widespread and yet so misunderstood. A Body Made of Glass unpicks the mysterious relationship between mind, body, and a health anxiety which may or may not have a physical source… Humane, thoughtful, and unsettling. The best book I’ve read in ages – Cal FlynA wonderful, poignant and personal journey into the world of hypochondria. Written with wisdom and insight, this is both an important and entertaining read into a much misunderstood condition – Dr Alastair Santhouse[A] thoughtful and touching examination of what it means to be well… Crampton’s unflinching honesty and skill with words make for a tender and often heart-breaking history of medicine. Every medical professional should read this book – Subhadra DasMoving and fascinating… By combining her own experiences with a reflective and insightful study of hypochondria’s history, Caroline has created a unique exploration of the condition. A surprising, uplifting and compelling book – Dr Michael BrooksA compassionate, erudite and humane exploration of our greatest anxieties. If you’ve ever had sleepless nights worrying about your health, this definitive history of hypochondria is for you – Dr Jules MontagueWith wry humour, [Crampton] recognises the frequent absurdity of her situation… She is an evocative writer, capable of elegant description and astute analysis, and she captures the ambiguities and contradictions of health anxiety * New Scientist *

Caroline Crampton is an author and podcaster who writes about the world and how we live in it. She worked in journalism at publications like the New Statesman and The Times before focusing on literary non-fiction. Her first book, The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary (Granta, 2019), was described by critics “as elegant and sinuous as the river” and “wise, fascinating and informative”. Her award-winning podcast about golden age detective fiction, Shedunnit, is distributed by BBC Sounds. As a broadcaster, she has appeared on BBC Two, Sky News, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4 and her reviews have been published by the Guardian, London Review of Books and Spectator.